Ultimatum
by JMK758
Summary: An old case haunts the team as death invades the bullpen.
1. Squeezed

This is my twenty-second NCIS mystery and the second of my Third Season. The list of stories got so extensive I moved it, with summaries, to my profile.  
The usual legal disclaimers apply. I don't own anyone except Rev. Siobhan Sha-vonn O'Mallory and original Agents.  
Please Review.  
Rating: T or NCis-17.

Ultimatum  
By JMK758  
Chapter One  
Squeezed

The apartment was once home, but now the small, dark rooms with their coats of dreary, long-ago off-white paint are empty, desolate, barren. Gradually everything has been sold save a table, a chair and a radio. It's over. Tomorrow the electricity goes off.

'Happens,' the woman reflects bitterly, 'when you stop paying the bills and tell them to take their negotiations and fuck themselves.'

Tomorrow it doesn't matter if the electricity goes off, if the heat goes off, she doesn't need the phone, there hasn't been anything to eat in days. The roaches can die of starvation.

The girdle is ready. The bracing had been the hardest challenge, solved by metal sheeting wrapped firmly over and over about her torso, closer than any man will hold her ever again. Twenty-five cylinders. Twenty-five damnations. More than enough.

She only has to destroy six, herself and five soulless monsters. She indulges in a minute of cursing them, but their end will be so much better.

'Thou shalt not kill.' That's been drilled into her all her life, right next to 'honor thy husband'. Well, there's no more husband, and tomorrow she'll do far worse than kill.

They're going to know why it's happening before she detonates the bombs. They're going to know everything before they go to hell.

She picks up the leather band, wraps the twenty-five cylindars about her waist, binds the covering metal about her. She bends and twists, tests her range of movement. It's snug, stiff, but doesn't interfere with breathing or motion.

Soon it'll do both.

x

The approach had been the second major problem. One doesn't walk uninvited into the Washington Navy Yard, certainly not wearing twenty-five bombs. Planning, and the search for an opportunity, had taken a month.

Gibbs is out, he's too smart. Da-veed is too suspicious, so slipping into her car is impossible; the bitch inspects it every morning. The Chink Palmer is too unpredictable. One would think a new-married woman would be more stable, but she seems to have quite the night life separate from her husband. Tailing her was an adventure; the bitch spends some evenings in a downtown building that's guarded far too closely. It's some kind of 'members only' club and she can't ever predict how long the cunt will be away from her car.

The husband? Even more unpredictable. There needs to be a body to autopsy or he might not even go into work. There'll soon be as much work as he can handle, but that's no help now.

DiNozzo's night life revolves around his wang. He might be home or elsewhere, so he's the most unpredictable of all.

Ironically that leaves McGee. What joy, what _glorious _justice!

The bastard's as predictable as either of his books. He's home every night by midnight unless a case holds him over, but even then he's utterly bland and uninspired - again just like his books. Though following him for weeks had revealed an unhealthy interest in his Church, it'd quickly turned out he's less interested in the Church than in its _priest_.

'Dating a priest, how _sick _is _that_?'

Yes, McGee, who's home every night by midnight, who parks his car and never gives it a second thought, McGee is her way in. The bastard who _deserv__es_it most will be the one who dooms his friends to hell.

xxx

Michelle Palmer is surprised to hear music as she approaches the door to her apartment. Music isn't unusual but it's twenty three thirty and Jimmy has it turned up almost unconscionably loud. 'He's sure not studying.'

He's devoted every evening - and night - to his books, studying for his Medical School finals, going so far several times as to block her out. She hadn't minded much, she'd just gone to the Wiccan temple instead, knowing he'll go back to giving her physicals when the pressure is off. But now it sounds like his studies have been diverted to Webber's 'Phantom of the Opera', but it's not Michael Crawford singing the 'Music of the Night'.

She unlocks and opens the door, knowing that under the powerful music he can't possibly hear her. She gets a pair of surprises as she steps into the living room and closes the door.

Jimmy stands facing the stereo, his back to her, and he's obviously adjusted the controls to filter out the Phantom's vocal. He's the one she heard singing, which is the pleasant surprise; he has an excellent and inspiring voice.

"Close your eyes and surrender to your darkest dreams, purge your thoughts of the life you knew before..."

The unpleasant surprise is that he's 'borrowed' her long, hooded Wiccan cloak to use as a black cape. It'd normally make her very angry, he knows better than to touch her equipment, but she's too surprised to be angry. She steps up behind him, forgetting annoyance in fascination. She loves to hear him sing, especially when he has no idea she can hear him and he busts out with unbridkled passion. The hood is up, rather like the Phantom wore his cloak in 'Point of No Return' but she's glad he's not singing that other; it's a duet and he holds back for her.

"and you'll live as you've never lived before."

x

She doesn't mind his borrowing her cloak, the song is heavily erotic when Crawford sings it, infinitely more so when he does. He's deeply into the music, she's deeply into _him_. Erotic? Crawford's excellent but he doesn't come close to what Jimmy does to her.

"Open up your mind, let your fantasies unwind-"

'Oh _yes_. You _know _my fantasies, Phantom.'

"- in this darkness which you know you cannot fight..."

'I don't want to fight. Not you. Except to tussle in bed.' She listens rapturously, letting him carry her away.

"- let your soul take you where you LONG TO _BEEEEEEEEE_..."

'Oh, yes. _Please_ _y__es_.'

"Touch me. Trust me. Savor each sensation..."

'Oh, _touch _me.'

Engrossed in preparation for his finals, he hasn't touched her since before she'd gone to that Haunted House weekend. Now she feels him, feels his hands on her, has to clutch the front of her skirt to keep her hands off him and feels his hands touching her, feels those sensations center in her–

"Let the dream begin, let your darker side give in..."

'Oh Jimmy, I give." She feels her flesh come to a boil. 'I _give_."

"...the power of the Music of the Night."

The music swells, climaxes - and so nearly does she.

"You alone can make my song take fliiight..." His voice strokes her, caresses her, she can feel his hands, his whole body against her. "Help me make the Music of the Niiiiiiiiiiiiight."

That note strokes her like a bow across the strings of her vagina. The music fades, he turns, jumps guiltily when he sees her behind him.

"Oh Phantom - _take _me," she cries. "_Ravage _me!"

He slams backward on the floor under her.

xxx

The blonde woman gathers the last of her possessions; the pistol, the twenty-five cylinders attached to the steel brace, the small detonator, the tool box, the wire hanger, the long black leather coat and the keys. Pocketing the keys in her blouse, she puts the hinged brace about her waist. It's barely comfortable, the brace holds the metal tubes snug against her.

God is with her.

She won't have to endure the brace long.

Only for the rest of her life.

xxx

Tim McGee can't feel the book propped on his lap. In his bedroom easy chair he tries again to focus but his eyes won't cooperate. He squints but the letters just won't lose the fuzz around them. It feels, too, like a blanket is coming down over his brain and his grey matter is curling up for the night, ready to quit even if his body isn't.

Today had been busy. The search for a UA Petty Officer has provided a more than usual challenge that was developing into a juicy mystery. Maybe it's even something that, with embellishments, his alter-ego Thom E. Gemcity can use, now that his third hardcover is about to hit the shelves.

But he can't stop winding down. The book on his lap isn't good enough to keep his eyes from growing steadily heavier.

He closes his bleary eyes and sleep immediately wraps about him, tries to overwhelm him. He fights back, sleep rallies and he's about to admit defeat. He'll fight long enough to struggle from the comfortable chair to the more comfortable bed, then surren–

A barrage of knocking and bell ringing erupts from his front door. The frantic summons rips languid sleep away, adrenaline slams his brain awake and he pushes out of the comfort. Repressing words he hasn't used in years, he staggers into his living room, stops and forces himself to full alert.

When he approaches the noisy door he stands off-line from it, back pressed to the wall. He doesn't think an attacker would announce himself so _loudly_, but he's cautious. No one he works with would call attention like this. Well, maybe Abby, but... "Who's there?"

"It's _me_," a woman's frantic voice calls through the wood. Though the voice is familiar, the tone certainly is not. He unlocks and pulls open the door and Siobhan O'Mallory blows past him on a gale of anxiety.

x

She gets ten feet past him and starts to pace rapidly, to and fro, her long white coat and red hair resembling a blizzard topped by a conflagration. "It's all going crazy," she exclaims, slicing the air sharply with her hands as though to cut through reality. "It's out of _control_. It's all going _wrong_!" She's so frantic she completed three circuits, toward and away from him, in the course of three staccato exclamations.

He stares at her, not knowing what to make of the flame-haired woman's uncharacteristic outburst. She turns away to start her sixth circuit.

"What's wr–?"

She whirls on him. "Timmy, let's _elope_."

x

This is more stunning, but she doesn't even wait for his answer before resuming her frantic pacing.

"Errr, okay."

She halts half-away, whirls on him so sharply her gold glasses almost fly aside. She grabs for them, rights them on her face. "Are you _crazy_? I can't _elope_, I'm a priest! Priests don't elope, we get married in a _Church_."

"Then why–?"

She turns away, resumes her frantic pacing. "You're supposed to be talking me _out _of it."

"It's - err - a bad idea?"

She whirls back to him, advances on him. "Of _course _it's a bad idea! How could you even–?"

He catches her shoulders, no longer sleepy. For him Shav's presence has always been like a double shot of adrenaline with an epinephrine chaser, but he's never experienced it quite like this.

"Shav, can we pretend, for just a minute, that I don't know what you're talking about?"

"Our _wedding_."

"That much I actually got. We're getting married–"

"I don't mean our marriage, I mean our _wedding_."

x

It takes a moment for him to find the distinction. She tries to turn away, to resume her frantic pacing, but he won't ease his grip, not until she gives up fighting him and can answer intelligibly.

"I'm talking about our wedding itself. The actual wedding."

"I'm getting that. I thought it was all set." She'd spent the month she'd hidden away in his apartment, almost the entirety of January into February, arranging the myriad details. He'd thought she'd covered everything possible from an insider's vantage. She's handled a lot of weddings, knows exactly what to do; this is different only in intimacy.

"Do you know who's doing it?" It's not a question, it's a demand and he's surprised again by her intensity. He can't remember the last time she's demanded anything of him.

"The wedding?" She nods sharply and restores her glasses again. "I... Father Donaldson." It had been the last time he'd checked, which he admits had been never. He'd just taken it as a given that Siobhan's partner and Rector would do the ceremony as he'd led the pre-Cana preparations. "Isn't he?

"_No_."

"Why not?" What a time to pull out. He can't believe it; he'd better have an incredible reason.

She twists, wanting to break his grip on her shoulders to start pacing again; he backs her to and down into a chair. He's not sure what could drive the level woman so close to the edge, he just wants to stop her fall.

"Stay down and tell me. From the top."

x

She looks up at him and he can see in her emerald eyes that she's grateful for his force. She marshals her thoughts, opens her coat and pushes it off onto the chair back. She's wearing her clerical 'uniform' of light blue shirt and inch-and-a-quarter high wrap-around white collar. That she'd come to his apartment like this is further testimony of her distress.

"No, George isn't doing the Service," she announces, her voice drowning in exasperation.

"Why not?" The wedding is next week. He can hardly imagine what could justify this near-last-minute change.

She sighs heavily, tries to get up to resume her frantic pacing, can't get past his grip and stops trying, settles for looking up at him, tightly clamped distress shining in her eyes. "We got a call the other day, I wasn't going to tell you - yet. From the Archdeaconry. The Archdeacon knows about the wedding, of course, everyone in the diocese knows."

So far that's no surprise. He supposes that when one of their own announces an impending wedding, word among the clergy spread faster than scuttlebutt.

"Archdeacon Norwood would like to Officiate," she continues. "He oh-so-kindly asked if George would be willing to let him. He didn't exactly _suggest _that George step aside, but he didn't have to come out and say it."

"A Deacon." Something's not right.

"The _Arch_deacon," she corrects.

Tim tries to sort it out. A deacon, he knows, is an ordained layman styled 'the Reverend Mister' but he's one rank _below _a priest. "I'm sorry, I don't–"

"The Archdeacon is the priest in charge of the Archdeaconry."

This takes a moment to sort out. "So he outranks you?" he ventures.

"_Yes_."

"Ah." At last something's clear. He won't ask 'why the confusing title?'; she's still a moment away from bursting. "Why is he even interested?"

"Because I can't seem to keep my a– my _butt _out of the news." She sees in his eyes what picture she's conjured. "Timmy, don't you _dare_."

He lets go of her shoulders, holds his hands up to block her more emotionally than physically this time. "Shav, take a breath." A second. "Calm down." A second. "Tell me from the top."

x

She does take that breath and it's a long moment before she lets it out but she doesn't seem much more relaxed. "First I'm in the news with the capture of Charlie Morley."

"You mean _your _capture of–."

"_Shut up_! No, honey," she clutches his hands, instantly going from angry to contrite, "I'm sorry."

He didn't feel any sting, nor does he want her distracted. "And..."

"Then I'm in the papers when I got appointed Chaplain - first time a woman ever held the post in NCIS Washington. Then my apartment got blown up, the whole top floor of my old building's gone and I'm _back _in the news. Then the reporters heard about John DeKalb attacking Helen at Starbase 86. I just _happened _to be there with Abby but of _course _that one reporter made the connection among all those witnesses and–"

"Of course." The 'vampire attack' on a waitress at DC's only Sci-Fi club was too good for the reporters to miss, and she hadn't 'just happened to be there'.

"Then I got kidnapped and the hunt extended all over the East Coast and made the National news. Then I'm part of that 'We' magazine article they did on NCIS; not just me but you know they just _had _to include me, _blast it_. And _now _I'm getting married."

x

What had been muddy a few minutes ago is now too clear. "You've become so famous - or infamous," she can't help a choked laugh at the irony, "that he feels some of the fame will rub off on him."

She nods.

Tim recalls so many occasions when such things happen almost everywhere in the government, and with NCIS it's usually a credit tussle with the FBI, CIA or the rest of the alphabet soup. It never goes well. "So he made his so-generous offer and, since he outranks you, you can't really say no."

"Right."

He wishes all marriage problems were as easy to solve. "Well, he doesn't outrank _me_, so 'thank you very much for your generous offer but we're going with Father Donaldson'."

"I'm afraid it's not that simple."

"Yes it is. It's my wedding."

"You don't understand. When BishopMatthewsheard about it, he saw through it as quickly and decided it was a really good idea."

Shav's distressed arrival, her proclaiming things out of control, now makes sense. "The Bishop has kindly and generously offered his services and hasn't _had _to come out and say to the Archdeacon 'please step aside'."

"You've got it."

"I've got it. Same answer." He grins. "See, there's no need to elope, though the ladder to your window does have a certain appeal."

"Don't joke," she sighs, happy this part is back under control but sure there's some new madness just over the horizon. "This has gotten completely out of control, turned into such a circus I'm surprised we're not having the Ringling Brothers host it." She shakes her head, still unable to believe something so simple has become so complicated. "I just wanted a simple wedding–"

"No such thing." Her fame and his - or rather Gemcity's - together with his standing in NCIS, especially after the Millennium incident, have seen to that.

"I know, just a thousand of our closest friends packing the nave and reporters coming out of my wazoo." Despite his effort, Tim almost falls over laughing. "_It's not funny_."

"Yes it is," he tells her when he can get his breath. "That was - that was worthy of Ziva."

"I guess so," she admits, unable to fight a smile, grateful that enough of her tension eased so she _can _smile. Now that the problem is solved - in the only logical way - she can take a breath, grateful he's kept the level head she'd lost. "I've been beside myself all day. You know, Ellen told me - I didn't even realize - that during today's Noon sermon I referred to the 'Marthians and Pedes'."

"That's funny too."

"Not very." She sighs heavily. "I should've seen the solution without having to bother you. Religion is my life, this is what I do."

"You were too close to the problem."

"I guess so. Thank you."

"You've been so focused on this wedding for so long," he tells her. "So have I been."

She no longer has to force a smile. "A rún, you're a man; I _know _what you've been focused on. The Honeymoon."

He'd call that unfair if it weren't true - to a point.

x

She sits back against the white coat, pulls her arms belatedly from the sleeves, unable to keep up the teasing under the weight of the past three months. Has it really been just ten weeks since his surprise proposal? "But an anonymous wedding is out of the question."

"You need a pseudonym," he tells her philosophically. "Speaking of which," he leaves her, goes to his writing desk, a moment later brings back a paper. "The wedding, reception _and _honeymoon are all paid for, courtesy of Thom E. Gemcity."

The paper he hands her is a copy of a check from his publisher. "I deposited it yesterday. 'Cearbhall's Quest' hits the shelves in three weeks."

Siobhan leaps into his arms and throws the burden of concern away in favor of this delight. When she pulls her lips from his, eases the tight grip of her hug, she confesses: "I didn't even realize you'd finished it." She'd regret losing track of it if he ever talked of his work in progress, his first foray into the world of 'Sword and Sorcery', but: "I never got to read it."

"Read it? You _lived _it."

The joy vanishes as though turned off with a switch. "Don't remind me," she says flatly.

x

She can't make herself forget that months ago he'd been injured, had struck his head and for a time had believed himself to be the Elf Lord from his novel. His team mates had shared the nightmare, compelled to adopt roles from his unfinished opus, with his sanity the prize in the quest.

Locked in delusion, he'd seen Agent Gibbs as King Tighearna, Jennifer as Queen Brigid, herself as Princess Mairenn, Jimmy and Michelle as the Elvan and Human lovers Aylfryd and Una, Ziva as his Elvan co-warrior Muirne and Agent DiNozzo as the villain Dubhshlaine.

Timmy had tried to kill Agent DiNozzo and for many horrible moments it seemed _he'd _died instead of his friend.

His doctor had earlier declared Timmy's fate might well be death or years - possibly a lifetime - of madness. Only God's Love, Gibbs' stubborn determination and the love of a good woman whom she must admit wasn't her, had spared him these fates and had gifted him with healing instead.

x

"Well, this is the real fantasy," he assures her, "not the fake dream but the actual fiction."

She squints at him. "Can you say that again?"

"No."

"Well, anyway," she holds him more tightly, "I feel a lot better now."

"Always glad to set you straight."

"Cute. I thought you liked curves." She emphasizes the point with an enticing wiggle. He grins but she slips nimbly out of his arms. "Not 'till we're married."

He stops. He'd been about to pursue her but despite her teasing smile - and the hint that she _wants _him to pursue her - he remembers his own resolution. When she had come to him in January, she'd been wounded, lost and overwhelmed. Days of brutal captivity, unspeakable sexual tortures and the certainty of death - ending in her crucifixion - had wounded her more than she's ever admitted. She'd sought his aid, his protection, and he could only try.

He'd sworn to himself that, among other things, he wouldn't make any moves on her, not until she recovered. Rather, he'd given her the refuge of his home. She hadn't wanted to withdraw, in her reaching out to him, by driving him out of his own bed, so they'd lived together in a platonic, careful balance for a month.

It'd been an interesting month.

x

But in those long weeks he hadn't touched her but to offer comfort, even on the one occasion when she'd wanted to break through her fear by reaching out to him. She'd made an offer that was beyond her to keep, and one he couldn't allow himself to accept.

They'd managed, with professional help and close intimacy beyond the physical, to get through the month. Her wounds - the physical ones - had almost healed. The inner ones will take longer, but she'd eventually found the strength to return to her life.

And they'd continued their plans to get married.

But now, though each has suffered, March is here and the 17th is barely a week away. Soon so much will change.

Soon _everything _will change.

"So," Siobhan continues, standing out of his reach, her smile as much promise as tease, "how was your day?"

xxx

The blonde woman finds McGee's car parked halfway down his street, a habitual spot, and she knows he's not alone. She'd watched his apartment from across the street, waiting for his light to go out, but when the priest/whore had come instead, this was even better. He's almost certain not to go for a drive now, so there's plenty of time to work.

Since the woman priest - how _wrong _that is - had arrived in her own car, she'll leave in it - or not. The blonde woman doesn't care. McGee won't come out for the rest of the night and that's all that matters.

When she'd made her choice of whose car to stow away in, she'd gone on-line and reviewed everything she'd learned earlier about this model. Obscured now in the deep shadows of the Silver Spring side street, to open and dismantle the lock takes less than twenty minutes.

She throws the pieces into the trunk. Super glue will hold the front of the lock in place, closing the small hole. Now there's no danger of being locked in.

She surveys the available space. Removing the spare tire and the other things makes up for her weight. She dumps these in a nearby driveway, returns to the car and squeezes in. Setting her flashlight on its base, she twists the wire hanger to seal the trunk closed.

The trunk is cramped and not a bit comfortable while the cylinders clamped about her body under the steel brace make finding a good position difficult, but she won't be in the confining space for long. In the morning McGee will so-obligingly drive her into NCIS Headquarters.

And there she'll send those bastards' souls to hell.

And if he doesn't, if for some reason he tries to open the trunk - well, the gun at her hip will solve that problem. McGee will just go first and she'll revise her plan for the others.

She has all the time in the world.


	2. Bellerophon

Chapter Two  
Bellerophon

Change of shift is perfect, the blonde woman reflects as she climbs out of McGee's car trunk, glances about the garage and stretches as well as the metal girdle will allow. Agents are coming in, others are going out and no one glances twice at a new face in their garage. The Iris scanner gives her pause as she walks toward the elevator. She can't use it to get in; not only won't the scanner respond to the pattern of blood vessels in her eye but it'll probably set off an alarm if she tries to use it.

The challenge means nothing, however; she only needs to wait. Four minutes after leaving McGee's Trojan Hearse the elevator doors open and two tired men get off, their thoughts on home and bed. Nod, smile, board and done.

She doesn't know which button to push but she knows what her targets look like. Holding her unbuttoned black coat closed, careful that the bulges don't show, she presses 2. She'll use the stairs from there on.

xx

When Leroy Jethro Gibbs enters the third floor bullpen, his team is already working but Michelle Palmer leaves her desk to exit through the rear of the bullpen toward the back stairs. "Where are you going, Palmer?"

She turns, evidently surprised at his call as he enters the front of their workplace. "Oh, Special A–. Sir. I'm - er - just going up to Legal. I have to look up something on the Dixon case."

"Can't do it by phone?"

x

She knows he means that her old colleagues will do research at her direction just as she used to when this or any other team called upstairs; she's a Field Agent and therefore a ranking officer.

"Faster if I do it myself," she says with a disarming smile. She's in a very good mood after spending the night with the Phantom deep in his dark chambers and not even Gibbs can spoil this afterglow.

The look he gives her is clearer than words: 'Do the research, but you're there to work, not visit friends'. She turns and leaves, reflecting she hardly needs to visit. She saw Janice and Vikki just three evenings ago at Siobhan's bridal shower.

She smiles at the recollection of that wild evening. She'd described it a few weeks earlier as being illegal in fifteen states but she suspects it's more like twenty. She also suspects that the priest isn't likely to show her red face for her regular Tuesday shift this morning.

And if she _does _see Siobhan, she's sure she can dredge up many choice memories to torment her friend with.

Siobhan's closest friends had been the most explicit and unrestrained in their selections of gifts for the soon-to-be-wed priest to enjoy. Some of those gifts had evoked from her many more looks of horrified embarrassment than lurid fun.

Michelle's secondary gift, for everyone had brought two types, was tame by comparison. Anything, she imagines, would be tame by comparison to what the priest's closest friends had brought, but it was something she still doubts the woman will wear in public. A red mesh tee-shirt a size too small, the mesh a mite too generous, declared in lurid lettering 'I feel a sin coming on'.

Abby's secondary, a Kevlar bra, had provided a great deal of delightfully lurid speculation.

However, Abby's primary gift was, for Siobhan, unbeatable. Siobhan had said that, after the Kevlar bra, she was afraid to open the low rectangular box, but when she did she'd stopped breathing.

x

Months ago Abby, fleeing a murderous stalker, had hid for a night in the shelter of Siobhan's former apartment. It was the first opportunity the women had had to spend any time together and Abby had learned, among other things, about Siobhan's love of books. They had been in every room but the priest actually had one room devoted to them, a staggeringly eclectic library. One book in particular had been a fascinating revelation. It was her High School Yearbook featuring, among other memories, an extremely self-conscious Timothy McGee, a young man whom Abby had barely recognized.

When Siobhan's apartment had been bombed, she'd lost everything save the clothes on her body. Abby had found an archive copy of the volume at their school and had chain-FedExed it to every former classmate she could find.

When she'd presented it at the party, and Siobhan had read the wedding wishes of so many friends supposedly long ago gone, there had been a great deal of hugging and tears.

x

But of course that night was still a party, one that had stretched - no, had shattered - the boundaries of decorum and had gleefully stomped upon the debris.

Siobhan had long ago made all her friends in turn, those of NCIS included, promise never to treat her with overdone deference because of her Calling. While she often had trouble living up to that promise to the priest, that night the key word was 'lurid' and every woman had offered loving disrespect and embarrassment in abundance.

Nothing had been more outrageous than the entertainment, which had arrived in the person of a very handsome man wearing a black clerical shirt and white tab collar. He'd initially presented a very convincing aspect, introduced as a friend of the hostess and pretended to be a colleague of Siobhan's who'd been invited to stop by and offer his best wishes. He'd thereby caught her completely off guard.

Siobhan had been utterly mortified when the music had come on and the collar, and more, had come off. Michelle had been sure she'd flee but there had been no place to escape to.

Melanie Velez had dragged from her an admission, later when restraint had mellowed with wine and other spirits, that she'd harbored some ultra-private dreams - though _certainly not - ever -_ of her partner Father George Donaldson.

No one believed her.

The unrestrained evening did resolve one question for Michelle, however: it had confirmed what she'd heard about blushing redheads.

xx

"What've you got on Dixon?" Gibbs asks DiNozzo as he continues to his desk and sets his large coffee cup beside the case file folder he'd prepared last night.

"PO2 Donald Dixon," Tony announces, using the plasma screen's remote control to bring up the formal Naval ID photo that's become so familiar over the past two days, "was last seen aboard the Destroyer USS Stout two days ago." He speaks crisply, wishing he'd used Gibbs' absence as a chance to hit the head; he'd been just about to and now regrets his carelessness. "He'd been given Port Watch for a series of minor infractions while everyone else took Shore Leave, but he walked off and hasn't been seen since."

"McGee, any hits on his credit cards?" Though there had been none last evening, Gibbs considers it only a matter of time before there will be. Of course, the time lag between Visa recording a transaction and alerting NCIS means the best they can hope for is a general location rather than a chance for immediate capture.

"Nothing yet," the computer expert replies.

"How long can someone go without using a credit card?" DiNozzo muses, eyeing the exit beside him and planning the best moment for his escape.

"You," Ziva David replies, "about a day. But Petty Officer Dixon is on a sheep. He is staying off the grid."

"On the lam."

"Lamb, sheep, your idiot idioms are still too nonsensical."

DiNozzo wants to re-correct her, but a glance at Gibbs makes him change his mind. Instead he stands up, about to go down the hall.

x

"Going somewhere, DiNozzo?" Gibbs asks. Palmer's already left, and he doesn't intend for the bullpen to be vacated.

"Pit stop, boss." DiNozzo is blocked, however, by a tall woman who steps into the bullpen. He decides there are good reasons to momentarily delay a pit stop after all.

"Excuse me," the woman says, "there's something I need you to do for me."

DiNozzo has several ideas for what he could do for this beautiful honey-blonde vision. "Good morning," he says in his most suave voice, determined to gather points before he has to turn her over to his boss and _then _hit the Head. "I'm Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo. What can I do for you?"

He notices she's not wearing a Visitor Pass at the same moment that she throws open her long black coat and lets it fall from her arms to the floor.

"YOU CAN GO TO FUCKIN' HELL!"

x

"_Whoa_," DiNozzo's exclamation punctuates his backpedaling and he's almost relieved himself of the need to visit the Head. Every eye in the bullpen and the surrounding sections turns to the loud woman and the band of explosives that circle her abdomen.

"NO ONE MOVES," she screams as though she didn't have the attention of every Agent in the complex. No one draws a weapon; they sense rightly this might force the final act.

She pulls a small box from between the metal girdle and her ribs, holds it high over her head in her right hand. Long wires snake down to one of the cylinders. "FIRST ONE MOVES I BLOW YOU ALL TO HELL!"

x

Gibbs' level words fill the void, as quiet as her scream had been loud. "No one's going to move," he tells her tonelessly, his voice held steady by steel will. He's not going to let her see how hard his heart is pounding.

The woman whirls on DiNozzo. "GET BACK!"

"Sit down, DiNozzo," Gibbs orders, holding his face as a calm mask. His heart slams hard enough to shatter his ribs. "No one's going to move."

So slowly a tortoise might outrun him, Tony cautiously returns to his chair. He eases himself down as though sitting too hard will set off the bombs five feet from him.

The woman also has a gun on her right hip, but he doesn't care about that. He might survive bullets, the multitude of bombs will certainly kill him.

x

Every agent standing in the huge Operations Center holds his or her place, does nothing to distract from the Deputy Special Agent-in-Charge or his quiet, level voice. "What do you want?" He pretends she hasn't already screamed the answer to that question when she'd thrown off her coat.

"This is a 'dead woman' switch," the blonde woman announces, her voice slicing into every crevice of the huge room and battering the thirty-seven agents scattered about the complex.

The box in her hand is three inches square, an inch high, in the center is a white button and on that button is her right thumb. "I let go of this button and you all go to Hell in a billion pieces."

Thin wires run from the device to the girdle of metal cylinders, but only the tops of those cylinders are visible above the protective metal clamp.

x

'She wants something,' Gibbs thinks, 'or we'd be dead already. But can I risk giving it to her?'

To his right he sees Ziva's hand inch slowly toward her desk drawer. The blonde woman before him is looking over the tops of the surrounding partitions and he uses the moment to harden his expression. Ziva's hand stops.

"Everybody out," the woman snaps at the agents in the many sections of the Center. "Get the _fuck _out of here _now_."

'She can't see everyone.' Gibbs concludes. 'Too many of us to control.' "Everyone out," he orders as levelly as possible, his pulse drumming in his ears. He keeps his hands flat upon his desk; they're not shaking now but soon they might without the solidity of the desk top. Slowly, cautiously, the agents make for the various staircases.

"AND TURN OFF THAT DAMNED ELEVATOR. One 'ding' and you're out five agents."

"McGee can shut down the elevator from his computer," Gibbs volunteers carefully, hoping the woman will give in and allow the man the time to do it before someone arrives.

"DO IT," she yells.

McGee types quickly, inputting many commands into his computer. However, having a moment in which to work, only the first six commands control the elevator.

xx

In her fourth floor office Director Jennifer Shepherd puts down the file folder and rubs her eyes tiredly. The stack of files yet to be read is still too tall. Her day began at 0400, but a meeting on Capitol Hill at 1000 won't wait. The Appropriations Committee is meeting to dis–

The door to her left flies open and Cynthia Sumner bursts into the room. "_Turn on your plasma fast_."

Her Secretary is a consummate professional, calm and unflappable; able to balance a boatload of Admirals on one side, a flock of outraged Senators on the other and still deal with the Deputy SAIC, so when she crashes in to issue such a command Shepherd doesn't hesitate. She snatches the remote control from her desk and points it at the wall-mounted screen.

When Shepherd realizes the significance of the familiar angled view, she stifles a gasp.

"It's on my monitor and plasma outside," Sumner concludes.

The overhead view from the security camera in the third floor Operations Center shows a woman standing in Gibbs' bullpen, holding the seated agents at bay with a girdle of explosives and a small control box.

Every one of Shepherd's phone lines flares. She snatches the receiver, pushes a button at random. "Talk to me."

xx

"_Where is she_?" the woman snaps, turning from having looked rapidly at McGee, DiNozzo and David to confront Gibbs.

"Where is who?"

"The _Chink_. Where the Hell is she?"

Gibbs doesn't allow his face or voice to display his opinion. "Palmer?" He hopes she can't read faces, bodies and tones as well as he can and focuses on keeping his expression as unreadable as possible.

The woman kicks DiNozzo's desk - the metal explosion rips hearts from chests. "WHERE THE FUCK _IS _SHE?"

Gibbs moves only his eyes and is very grateful the young agent had developed the habit of putting her spring jacket into the same drawer as her purse, ID and weapon. It takes him a second to be sure he can answer flatly. "Not here today. She's on assignment aboard the Bellerophon."

xx

'Bless you, Gibbs,' Shepherd thinks and turns to Sumner. "Get her on her cell, get her in here."

"Yes, ma'am."

There is no Navy ship Bellerophon, but from Greek legend comes the 'Belleraphonic Letter'. The document, conveyed by messenger between the kings of Argos and Lycia had said, in essence, 'kill the bearer of this message'.

xx

"Get her back here _now_," the woman stabs the air with the detonator.

'How much, how long, can I bluff her?' Gibbs thinks. 'For the rest of our lives,' he decides, 'because when Palmer walks in here we're dead if no one got the message.' "That ship's docked a long way off." He doesn't dare imply she's at sea; that might set the woman off right now.

She jabs the detonator at him. "GET HER HERE."

Gibbs picks up his phone, his movements slow and deliberate. Not only doesn't he want to make any startling moves, but he doesn't want to display his own nervousness. Quick glances at his teammates imprisoned behind their desks show they fight their own fears. Trapped alone with this erratic woman, the Operations Center feels like a cavernous tomb.

xx

It's not Michelle Palmer's cell phone that rings, it's Jennifer Shepherd's. She yanks it out of the holder at her hip and flips it open. "We got your message."

/Palmer, where are you?/

"We're watching on the Security camera above you. McGee fed it to every monitor and plasma in the building. Michelle's on her way up here from Legal."

/We need you here. How long will it take you to get back?/

"How long can you stall? Abby's running facial recognition now."

/Four hour's too long. You've got three./

/GET HER HERE FASTER./ the woman's strident yell cuts through both the plasma and phone.

/It's over two hundred miles,/ Gibbs says as reasonably as he can and hangs up. Their voices come now only through the security monitor into Shepherd's office. /Three hours is the best she can do./

Shepherd restrains herself from telling Cynthia to update Abby. The Forensic Scientist has the same feed on her plasma screen and doesn't need the distraction. "Get Ducky up here." She needs psychological advice and, oddly enough, trusts the ME's insights more than all the psychologists on the payroll.

"And Jimmy?"

'Try to keep him away,' Shepherd thinks, 'though we're not going to send his wife into this.' She nods and reaches into the drawer for her Sig. If it comes down to an assault on Operations, she's not going to be behind this desk.


	3. Psychological Autopsy

Chapter Three  
Psychological Autopsy

"Since we have time," Gibbs says levelly, reasonably to the woman who's been using her detonator switch as a sword to punctuate her frantic, too often screamed demands, "why don't we talk?"

"Fuck talking. I'm done talking."

"About what?"

"No. No way." She looks sharply among the agents, particularly at DiNozzo and McGee, both motionless to her right. "You two, _get _over there where I can see you." She stabs the small detonator box in her right hand toward the space between Gibbs' and David's desks. Slowly, ultra-cautiously, the men leave their desks and enter the limited space between their partners.

"Sit on the floor, hands on your laps. You two," she turns to Gibbs and Ziva bookending them, "hands flat on your desks."

Their movements slow and deliberate, they won't allow their faces to show the fear that makes their mouths dry and their hearts pound in their chests. There's barely enough room for the two men to sit, and their bodies block Ziva.

x

Seething, Ziva can barely contain her frustration. Earlier she might have had a chance, now Tony and Tim block her path. To get to the woman now she now must move to her right, take the long way about. She might have been able to act had the woman gotten close enough, but now there is no hope.

She glares down at Tony when the blonde woman glances at Gibbs. If he had been less attentive to the woman's body he would have seen that over her breasts she did not possess a Visitor Pass. She was not escorted. But he did not look for her Pass, or her escort, he looked for her–

But now she is trapped, unable to save her team. She is the _warrior_, she has thirty-one distinct ways of disabling the woman and getting control of the detonator, and now she is blocked by her own partners.

x

DiNozzo wishes he'd used the Head earlier, thinking irrelevantly how unlikely it is that their captor will allow him a break. 'I'll hold it,' he thinks, 'for the rest of my _life_.'

He doesn't feel the guilt Ziva feels he should, is oblivious of her opinion. He hadn't had the chance to act while crossing the room since the woman had backed out of reach. He can only hope Gibbs has a plan. Their lives are in his hands.

'How come if I'm sweating so much, have to pee this badly, my mouth has to be so damned dry?'

x

Tim McGee, tucked in next to Gibbs' desk, tries to focus his thoughts on something other than his terror. Once he might have thought 'This'd make a great book.' Now only one thought can fight through the fear.

'_Shav_. Oh, Shav, I'm so sorry. But you're safe. If I never see you again, if I don't make it, at least you're safe. Forgive me, Shav. I'm sorry if it has to end like this. I love you.'

x

"Not _fair_," the woman mutters furiously, pacing the length of the bullpen, her hands slicing the air. "All planned, every bit - and that _bitch _isn't even _here_.'

The detonator, a single button on top of a three inch square, inch-high black metal box, shakes in the blonde woman's trembling right hand and the agents hold their collective breath. If her thumb slips from the button with her frantic gesturing, none of them will ever know it; the explosion of twenty-five cylinders wrapped around her torso will obliterate the entire floor.

x

"Why?" Gibbs asks, wishing he had some water.

She whirls on him, her hand squeezing the detonator so hard her hand shakes. "Never _mind _why. You don't get to _ask _why."

"All right," he says flatly. This woman can be pressed only so far, and her body language screams that she's near her edge. "You want to kill us, fine. I can see that." He tries not to see the disbelief in the eyes of his team. "But do you want to notify your family? Let them know what's happening to you?"

"Got no family. Got nothing. _And it's HIS FAULT_," she screams as she takes a step toward McGee, detonator thrust at his slamming heart. "I should–" She halts, but though fear spikes in his eyes they discover that's not what stops her.

"No. All of you," she declares, visibly restraining herself. "All of you at once, but _especially you_," she stabs the air before him. "_You _go first," she tells Tim, her grating voice rough with hatred.

x

McGee, forcing the thought through a bramble of terror, wonders how much distinction that'll be when those bombs go off. Not much. Now, however, they have a clue, maddeningly incomplete though it is.

In some investigation all five of them had been involved in - but apparently one for which he, in particular, gets the blame or the credit - this woman has lost much, possibly everything.

She's determined to wait for Michelle, to include her in her grand scheme of revenge, but what created that need?

Michelle had joined the team for several months during Gibbs' aborted retirement, had been transferred back to Legal upon his return. She'd worked sporadically with the team in the incident with the Chinese sex slaves, then after the Wiccan affair she'd officially rejoined the team when Abby had been stalked by a madman and she's been with them ever since. Months of time, from Summer through March. Dozens of cases.

Which one set this woman off?

xx

"I want to know how this woman got into a secure facility," Jennifer Shepherd tells Capt. Adam Clements, head of NCIS Security. The burly, blue-uniformed officer is equally outraged that a stranger could hold a roomful of men and women hostage with a band of explosives strapped about her, then to narrow her targets to four enemies. Caprice had kept it from being five, and only that luck has kept those agents alive.

"I'll find out," Clements assures her, anxious to get on the job. "I'll ring you as soon as I do."

He no sooner leaves than Dr. Donald Mallard enters. The older man looks haggard. "Director," he addresses her formally, itself testament to his stress.

"Ducky, I need a psychological autopsy," she gestures to the silent tableau on the large wall-mounted screen, "so we can prevent this from turning into the real thing."

"Amen to that. I've been watching downstairs. Unfortunately Autopsy does not boast a plasma screen, so I've had to make do with a laptop monitor."

"Use this one. Abby's working on a solution," she says, fervently hoping the woman finds one. She hasn't had time to ask what scientific marvels the scientist's creative mind might devise. As a counterpoint to the lack of motion on the screen, actions in this office have moved very fast indeed.

"Agent Palmer is outside," Ducky tells her. "I left her with her husband and rather leapt the queue."

When the Examiners had arrived Michelle, ignoring both himself and Cynthia Sumner, had gone immediately to her husband. Mallard knows that, over the past few months, the woman has been cultivating the image of a strong and confident agent, but the lives of her friends are on the line and she's helpless to do more than watch the drama unfold on Sumner's plasma screen. Under these circumstances, he also knows that little can beat the therapeutic value of a good hug.

"It's fine," Shepherd says. "The only thing I want her to do for now is to stay out of Operations."

"Yes, our subject has been adamant about having her return, and with a very literal deadline."

x

Shepherd doesn't miss his prodding, any more than she'd missed his gaze on the pistol at her hip. "We have less than three hours to solve this. What can you tell me?"

"Sadly, so far little more than you've figured out for yourself." He adopts his comfortable pedantic role to mask his own worries. "She is highly stressed and not confident at all; her method of enforcing control consists of intimidation and screaming at her captives. Despite her commanding position she feels little control over the situation, therefore she must constantly strive to renew that sense of control. Her personal timetable is badly skewed by her inability to take out all five of her enemies in one surprise assault."

"Do you think she'll detonate if Agent Palmer doesn't show?"

Ducky doesn't want to admit that "It is only now that I can see her face larger than a half of an inch, all too often in profile or less. I need more time to study."

"Best _guess_."

He's already answered this question, yet strives to give the woman something more. "The more frustrated her plans become, the less certain our friends' chances become. I shall have to give you more la–"

/STOP LOOKING AT ME./ The scream from the plasma screen makes them jump. They see the woman is confronting Ziva, who's glaring at her.

Their hearts climb up their throats as Ziva maintains her contact.

/I SAID STOP FUCKING _LOOKING_ AT ME./

"What is she doing?" Shepherd gripes.

"Goading her into getting closer," Ducky answers the rhetorical question.

/Ziva./ Gibbs' rock-hard voice forces Ziva to glance away, to back down.

"Thank God."

"This time," Ducky shakes his head, "I shall not."

xx

'Blast,' DiNozzo rants silently, longing to take this woman on, 'I almost peed my pants, but I wish Ziva had gotten her closer. I know it's Gibbs' play, and she's due a head-slap if we get out of this, but I wish she'd succeeded.

He tries to look to Ziva on his right without moving head or even eyes. His mouth is dry as the Sahara and though bathing in my own sweat he feels his bladder is about to burst. 'If not for that desk,' he gripes, barely able to see his trapped partner, 'Ziva and I - and the probie, could take her out. Sure; all I need is fifteen seconds to discuss it with them.'

x

Gibbs keeps his forced calm as a bitter counterpoint to her frantic peaks. "She's worried too." He knows Ziva had been planning her attack. Let this woman get in reach, she'll be dead. 'That's why we're stuck behind desks.'

"_You_," the woman gestures sharply at him with the detonator, her thumb rubbing the button, "you scared?"

"I'm scared." Gibbs doesn't mind admitting the truth, especially if it'll please her, however momentarily. "We're all scared."

"Good! You deserve it," she finishes bitterly.

"Why?"

"DON'T ASK ME THAT."

"All right."

x

Gibbs fervently wishes he knew what he could ask that won't set the woman off. Every time she screams at them his heart jumps and he knows his team fares no better. The sweat's rolling down DiNozzo's face, McGee is wide-eyed and white as his shirt, Ziva betrays nothing to the stranger but he knows her; in her eyes he sees the predator. Of all his people, he has to watch Ziva most closely, because given a chance, she'll act.

But can she be fast enough? The madwoman has only to release the pressure of her thumb on that button and they'll die so quickly that none of them will hear the blast.

He wishes he had some freedom of movement. The only other times he'd faced down someone with bombs strapped to his body or cuffed to his wrist he'd had freedom of movement, could take action. He wasn't trapped behind a desk. He'd been alone in the school, his team was safe. When Abraham had Sharif's bomb cuffed to his wrist they were together but had freedom of movement and with Lee Sung and that huge blockbuster bomb at the Pacific Rim Society his team had been free and he'd ordered them away – though they'd disobeyed. Now they're _all _trapped, held motionless by an unstable woman with a hair trigger and a death wish.

x

He wishes he had some water. He can fake calm - years in the Marines and as a Federal Agent have taught him how to do that - but he doesn't want to die. He'd told this woman the truth when he'd admitted he was scared. They all are. The younger agents to his right show it with varying degrees of control, but he knows they all feel that same pounding of their hearts, the same rush of cold fear that grips deep in his chest.

He doesn't want to die.

x

"What did McGee do?" he asks when it seems safe, trying to draw out anything he can. She's blamed McGee above them all. Maybe he can focus on that.

"What, you think if you can apologize it'll make everything all better?"

"No. No, an apology isn't going to help."

"Fucking right."

"What will?" He feels it's the most pointless question he's asked in months, but if he can keep her talking...

"I want you to be afraid."

"We're afraid."

"I WANT _HIM _AFRAID," she screams, thrusts the detonator box at McGee, who presses back into the partition.

"He's afraid. Aren't you, McGee?"

"Yes, boss." He's barely able to force his voice above a whisper.

"How afraid?" she demands.

He licks his lips with dry tongue. "Very afraid."

"You _deserve _it."

"Why? Please ... tell me what I did."

"YOU TOOK HIM AWAY FROM ME," she screams, stabbing the detonator at him.

McGee's heart stops, then resumes pounding like it wants to break out of his chest. His back nearly melded with the partition when she'd thrust the detonator like a sword. He doesn't want to ask, but the ball seems to have been passed to him. He doesn't want it. "Did I kill him?"

"IT'S YOUR FAULT."

"What happened?"

She stabs toward him with the box. "NO. SHUT UP. _SHUT UP__.__**SHUT UP**_!"

xx

Abby Sciuto's heart leapt into her throat when the woman broke, certain her friends were dead. She swallows terror down and clamps her hands over her mouth to smother a scream when her door beeps as it opens. She whirls, sees Jennifer Shepherd lead Ducky and the Palmers into the room, but doesn't waste breath asking how any of them are; their eyes tell their stories. She turns back to the plasma screen on the wall before her, barely able to tear her gaze from it for more than a second.

"I'm running my Facial Recognition program," she says tersely, pointing over her shoulder to the computer on the freestanding console behind her. On the screen, turned about so she can see it from the plasma, women's faces flash almost too quickly to resolve. "I could sure do with some fingerprints."

The image on the screen, the bullpen seen from the overhead security camera, is silent. None of the trapped agents further test the woman's fragile self-control.

"She has to have touched something," a woman's tense, strongly accented voice comes from the far corner. The four newcomers turn to find Rev. Siobhan O'Mallory seated on a stool. She stands up and approaches them, and her eyes hold the same fear they feel.

Shepherd had forgotten that today's Tuesday, the priest's regular day on duty here as NCIS' Chaplain. She won't ask what the woman's doing here rather than in her office, not with her fiancé facing almost certain doom. "As soon as we can find out how she got into the building, we may find something she touched."

"Meantime we have to stop her," Abby declares. On the screen, the woman paces relentlessly.

"Have any ideas?" Shepherd prays the scientist has a dozen.

"Not a one."

/_WHERE IS SHE_?/ the woman's scream snares their attention.

xx

"Driving," Gibbs answers succinctly, not moving. It's difficult staying in one position for so long, but he must only do it for the rest of his life.

"She better _get _here."

"Told you, it's two hundred miles."

"I KNOW HOW FAR IT IS." The mad woman's shrill voice abuses their nerves. "That BITCH isn't getting out of paying for what she did!"

This is interesting. It finally gives Gibbs something more to work with. Whatever she's worked up about has happened only within the past year. "I thought it was McGee you blamed most."

"It's his fault everything happened, but _she _can't escape paying for it either."

"What's her part?"

"Never mind."

'Okay, come back to this later,' he decides behind his mask. "But McGee started it?"

The woman whirls on McGee and for a horrible instant Gibbs thinks he's pushed too far.

"IF NOT FOR YOU _NONE _OF IT WOULD'VE HAPPENED!"

"I'm sorry," McGee blurts out, unable to help himself.

She advances on him, holds the detonator inches from his face. "It's too _late_ for apologies."

Tony readies himself to clutch her hand in both of his, keep the pressure on the button while the others take her. Another few inches. Just come another few–

She pulls back, resumes her pacing and Tony must swallow his frustration.

It tastes like bile.

xx

"He should've grabbed for it," Jimmy says, not caring which 'he' it'd be.

"It's a _dead-woman_ switch," Abby retorts, not taking her eyes from the screen. "If her thumb slipped and he didn't have control then it's _over_."

"Is there anything you can do?" Shepherd demands. "Something to lock her muscles?"

"Not instantly, and it'd have to be instantaneous." She turns to them. "We need a miracle."

Oddly, it's not O'Mallory she fixes on, it's Michelle Palmer. But the petite young witch stares up at her in wide-eyed horror.

x

'Oh Goddess.' She can't believe the woman just said that. 'Can you know so much of your precious hinkiness and _still _not get it?' "I haven't got any."

"'Chelle?"

She whirls on her husband. "Jimmy, don't you think that if I could I would?"

Shepherd had seen much, heard of more, most of it too incredible but "Michelle, you know I never put any stock in your brand of ... magic ... but if there's a chance–"

Michelle turns on her, her heart wrenched. "Director, I swear–"

"Agent Palmer," Ducky says, his calm, quiet tones more penetrating than any exclamation. He holds them all for a moment, trying to bring down the tension before he speaks. "In my travels I have seen much to convince me that there is more in this world than I can ever see. What you did for your husband that afternoon we rescued those unfortunate women in the wing laboratory I would classify as a miracle."

"Ducky - oh Goddess - my talents are - my best – my most effective talent is _healing_. Outside a Circle my powers are limited. I can't _do_ what I could do in a ceremony, or with other Coveners. I'm not the Goddess, I don't _have _miracles."

"What _can _you do?" Shepherd demands. She can barely believe she's asking the question, but she will if she has to.

Michelle gulps, faces the woman - and sacrifices most of her privacy for her friends. "I can influence people if I'm not opposed, but I _can't _counter _will_. I can give strength or take it away, weaken her so much she'd collapse but that's not what we want."

"I should say not," Ducky cuts back in, trying to be a voice of reasonable moderation.

"I can influence people into doing things but I _can't _fight her will. I'm _sorry_. I would if I _could_.

"No, my dear, it was unfair to expect more."

xx

Ziva is furious and doesn't care if it does show. Gibbs is the tactician, can present a calm mask. Tony would probably hesitate in striking a woman, Tim certainly would, but _she _would have gotten the device. It was so close to Tim. She would have snapped the bitch's wrist and got control of the box. In the moment the woman had threatened McGee, four methods were open to her.

Maybe she can goad her again into coming close enough.

xx

"What can we do?" Shepherd demands. "Look," she touches the screen at the point where the wire connects the detonator box to the first bomb. "We can get someone on the MTAC platform. A marksman can sever that lead. Who's our best shot?"

"Gibbs," Abby says. She ignores Shepherd's glare. "No, wait, Melanie Kelman."

"That's right." Michelle agrees. "Special Agent DiNozzo once told us he lost a hundred dollars to Martine Joswig because she bet him that Melanie was a better shot than he was. Melanie put seven bullets through the same hole her first shot made in the shooting range target downstairs."

"She's part of a team going for the next Olympics in shooting," Jimmy declares.

Shepherd might care if the situation were less tense. She pulls her cell phone out.

"Forget it," Abby counters. "It won't work."

x

"_Why_?" Shepherd is thoroughly tired of hearing that something won't work.

"Because the most common 'dead man' switch feeds an active pulse until it's cut off. Slicing the wire would be the same as her letting go of the button."

"Most common? What are the chances?"

"Eighty / twenty - against."

"Damn."


	4. Whitney

Chapter Four  
Whitney

The third floor is almost evacuated but one bullpen is a knot of deadly tension.

It's been nearly two hours since the mysterious woman captured the Operations Center and Gibbs' MCR Team with a band of explosives wrapped about her body and a 'dead woman' switch in her hand. Releasing the white button on the small control box will kill everyone in the room.

No one knows who the agitated woman is or the reason for the standoff. All that is known is that when Michelle Palmer - supposedly on assignment and still nearly an hour distant but in actuality in Abby's lab - is reunited with the team, they will all die.

Attempts at negotiation or obtaining information have consistently failed; the agitated woman wants nothing but revenge. An unknown offense took an unnamed loved one from her, and she's determined to kill - and die - for her vengeance.

x

"STOP _SQUIRMING_," the woman yells, stabbing the detonator at Tony, who with Tim is tucked seated on the floor between Ziva's and Gibbs' desks.

"DiNozzo." Gibbs keeps his voice level, glares beyond McGee at the man. He doesn't want any distraction; though truth be told two hours sitting in one position has been a strain on him as well.

"I'm sorry, boss." Tony tries to shift into a more comfortable position on the floor, pressed too close to McGee on his left and Ziva's desk on his right. It doesn't work. Talking is an effort when he's trying to keep most of his muscles tight. Some of them hurt, others scream at him to leave them alone. "I still have to hit the Head."

The woman halts her pacing and looks down at him. Her face lights in utter astonishment. "You have to use the _bathroom_?"

DiNozzo isn't sure he should get his hopes up. Maybe if he asks really nicely? "Please?"

"_**NO**_."

"DiNozzo."

"Holding it, boss."

His strained tone conveys how near a thing it is.

x

Jennifer Shepherd, Ducky, Abby, Siobhan O'Mallory and James and Michelle Palmer cluster about the plasma screen in Abby's lab, seeking answers and solutions and finding neither. For close to two hours plans have been conceived and forcibly aborted.

"I don't believe it," Jimmy mutters, as incredulous as the mystery woman had been over DiNozzo's request.

"Actually," Ducky counters, "it is a valid tactic. Captors _have _been known to occasionally exhibit a degree of reasonable mercy over common needs."

"There's nothing reasonable about _any _of this," Shepherd declares, more frustrated with each failure.

"No, director."

"How can we help them?" Abby asks for the eleventh time. Tension has them nearly snapping at one another, their skills, all their intelligence and security measures thwarted by a seeming madwoman holding a button they dare not let be released. They stare at the screen where Gibbs and Ziva sit behind their desks, Tony and Tim trapped on the floor in the space between, all held at bay, all helpless.

No one has an answer for Abby's infuriating question; too many plans have been proposed and rejected as failures before the fact. Their most likely alternative, in Shepherd's view, had been placing a marksman on the MTAC platform to sever the wire from detonator box to the explosives. Melanie Kelman is their best, the woman's team has ambitions of qualifying for the next Olympics, but even this plan had been ignominiously shot down. Try as they do, they're unable to devise even one plan that has a hope of success.

They've prayed for a miracle. What they get is far different.

x

In the nerve-tearing silence the signal from the Facial Recognition program running behind them seems loud as a shriek. Abby hurries a step to the monitor turned to face the plasma screen, paying no attention that she blocks the other's view. When sees the information displayed on the monitor, she barely restrains her shriek.

"No - _No_- God, NO!" Getting closer to the screen doesn't help, the damning information won't vanish.

"Who _is _she?" Shepherd demands, unable to see past the frantic woman's body.

"Mary Whitney – no criminal record - widow of _Dennis _Whitney."

x

That terrible name has its effects upon each of them. When Abby turns, sure her distress can't be masked, she sees different reactions from each of them in that first flash of memory. Shepherd's distress is at the near disaster that could've endangered thousands of Agents' lives.

Ducky's memories are of so many - too many - autopsies of good friends. Nearly a dozen agents had lost their final conflicts in the days following Dennis Whitney's infiltration.

He buries this with a request for Abby to bring up, on another monitor, all the records that had been obtained about the invader's wife in those initial days. He has minutes rather than hours in which to prepare a psychological autopsy, all while keeping half his attention on the developing drama on the plasma screen behind him.

But there's even deeper, personal horror on Michelle's and Siobhan's faces. Siobhan's stomach clenches, remembered panic and betrayal batter her like fists to the gut. Michelle's memory of pain is far lower, far more intimate.

Each woman has horrific memories of the man which are worse, more personal, than the torments he'd almost inflicted on all of NCIS.

x

Months ago Dennis Whitney, part of a terrorist cell and surgically altered as a twin to Timothy McGee, had replaced the agent in an effort to obtain classified information on every past, present and probationary agent in the world.

The real McGee had been kidnapped and tortured. While Whitney infiltrated NCIS and bored from within, his comrades had tried to force McGee to surrender the access code to the Delphi files. The two-pronged attack had bit deeply.

As 'McGee', Whitney had cut a devastating swath through the Agency. He had wounded Ziva's heart through brutal betrayal and, still in McGee's persona, had trapped Siobhan in an elevator and tried to rape her.

The blame for both atrocities had fallen upon the real McGee's head.

x

McGee's aberrations had originally been believed to have been the aftermath of the 'Elf Lord' delusion that had left him hospitalized and at risk for his sanity. He'd returned to work against advice and had soon - apparently - begun to exhibit increasingly erratic behavior. Amid all the suspicions that he wasn't himself, no one had realized the accuracy of their guess.

Michelle Lee, concerned about her partner's bizarre behavior, had chosen to follow him when, against orders, he'd suddenly left Headquarters. She'd learned of the plot and had tried to rescue the real McGee. Instead she'd been overpowered, tortured and gang-raped.

Three men, including the faux-McGee, had violated her seven times, and had made Tim McGee watch every atrocity. He could have made them stop. All he had to do to spare Michelle a series of agonizing rapes was to betray to their deaths every NCIS Agent in the world.

That plot had collapsed and Tim and Michelle had been rescued, but she'd suffered unspeakable torments.

Later, she'd begged Tim to remain silent about what she'd suffered. She'd wanted to keep the truth from Jimmy, to spare her fiancé the pain of what she'd suffered, the torments he couldn't have saved her from. It was a secret she'd managed to keep from all except Tim and, until very recently, Abby.

But in begging Tim for his silence she'd cut herself off from any help her fiancé could have given her.

Both Tim and Michelle had suffered gravely, but while McGee's wounds had been visible, Michelle's hadn't been. A long recuperation had allowed McGee to return to duty and he'd reluctantly kept Michelle's secret. No one knew then what wounds she bore.

x

No indications had ever been found that Mary Whitney had ever known of her late husband's activities. She had, in fact, been divorced from him at the time and had therefore been subjected to only cursory interviews. In time, she'd been forgotten in the press of the disastrous McGillicuddy, Crocetti and Morrison conflict which had occupied so much of NCIS' attention for so long and to such horrific consequence.

But though they'd forgotten Mary Whitney, she had not forgotten them.

x

Siobhan turns away, steps out of the cluster, tries to deal with her own demons.

Timmy, her oldest and dearest friend - though months from becoming her beloved future-husband - had trapped her, attacked her, tried to _rape_ her. It'd been the then-most horrific incident of her life. That Timmy had done it had devastated her. She'd believed in him, trusted him.

He'd tried to rape her!

It'd been just after the incident with the 'Elf Lord', when no one was sure or confident of Timmy's balance. She'd believed he'd lost his mind – again – and this time had acted on lusts kept repressed for so long.

And then the world had flipped upside down. She'd gone to his apartment, furious and ready for a fight, seeking justice before she turned him in. Instead she'd found him in bed, wounded, being tended to by his friends. He'd been beaten for days and rescued just hours before. While she believed he was assaulting her, _he _was being assaulted. When she'd learned this, she'd almost lost her own certainty of the world.

Outwardly she'd forgiven him, helped tend his wounds, but it'd taken time for her to sort her feelings into the new reality. _He _hadn't betrayed her, but it'd been much to which she'd had to adjust. Trust had turned to betrayal to hatred and flipped back to friendship. For a while, caring though she did, she wasn't sure just what the reality was anymore.

She'd blamed him for what was not his fault. She'd _known _he'd been guilty - and not guilty - of the most vile abomination. And when she'd learned the truth, that he'd been a captive, tortured while she blamed him, she'd shifted her anger to its true target but hadn't come to terms with her feelings.

In some way, while Charlie Morley's attack had been far harder to cope with, she'd managed it because she'd known her enemy. She knew Morley hated her, knew _why_ he'd done what horrible things he'd–

'Oh, God, please - I don't want to think of him! I can't forgive _either _of them, Whitney or Morley. How can I deal with them, how can I think of forgiveness, even though I _must_, if I can't – if I don't _want _to forgive?'

x

She'd confessed to George Donaldson. She'd confessed to Timmy. She'd sought their aids even more intensely than those of the professionals she'd gone to and bared her heart. To Timmy and George she'd bared her soul.

But the memory of what Whitney had done brings flares of pain, flashbacks of betrayal. Memory of what Morley had done brings pain to her most intimate depths.

But now isn't the _time_, not with disaster – Timmy could die. The others could die. _Timmy could die_! And she's here, 'safe'. So far away. So far from Timmy.

So _far_.

x

Michelle can't move. Memory flares, holds her frozen, rigid. Memory of pain. Memory of terror. Memory of _shame_. They'd beaten her. She'd fought, fought well, but she'd been outnumbered four to one and defeated. But defeat, her failure to rescue Tim, had been just the beginning of her agony. They'd held her down - _raped _her - tortured her and she can't say anything.

She'd begged Abby and Tim to keep her secret from everyone so Jimmy would never find out. He'd been through such hell when he'd had to kill George Franklin to save Megan Wood in that hospital room. She couldn't tell him what those four _bastards _had done.

She'd tried to spare him her pain. She'd tried to deal - alone - with her pain and humiliation and now all those memories are back. They assaulther and she can't call for help. Jimmy - he's her husband, he's two feet away from her, and because she'd kept her secret she can't even ask for help.

x

Abby can't rip her gaze from the two silent women who stand alone in the crowded lab. She longs for a moment to help them. She can't. "We have to get this to Gibbs."

"Yes," Shepherd says. "They'll be expecting Palmer to call on her way in. Michelle, give me your phone." The woman doesn't respond. "_Michelle_." When Palmer turns, all but Abby are surprised to see tears streaming down the petite woman's face. "What's–?"

"Nothing. _Here_." She rips the phone from her belt, shoves it into Shepherd's hand, turns and hurries away to Abby's office.

"What's going–?"

"Jimmy, go after her," Abby directs the surprised man. Secrets are going to be shattered, painful consequences will fall upon many because of this day and she doesn't have time to intervene.

The only other person who could potentially be of help is feet away suffering with her own demons. Abby tries not to look at Shepherd as Jimmy follows Michelle into the inner office and the clear door slides shut after him.

Siobhan, a few feet closer, looks like she's enduring, but Abby can't tell. The priest has had too much practice masking her feelings and Abby doesn't have a moment to search through the mask. Through her closed office door she sees Michelle turn and throw her arms about Jimmy and cling to him, her face pressed to his chest. Abby can see great wracking sobs shake her friend's body but she's too far away to help.

She turns away and her eyes meet Ducky's. The perceptive man apparently reads more of the situation correctly than can be good for either woman's comfort.

Abby feels she's standing in the vortex of an atomic blast, too late to do anything about either the devastation or the fallout.

She can only watch as Shepherd opens Michelle's phone.


	5. Delphi

Chapter Five  
Delphi

Ziva's rage sears her gut; not the crime-solving gut Gibbs enjoys the churning of but the incendiary furnace that powers a warrior - or consumes her when she's chained.

She can defeat this woman, gain control of the detonator and kill her in a dozen ways - and she's stuck behind a desk where Tony and Tim block her. She can't move fast getting around the other side of the desk beside the partition, she must attack through the space between her desk and Gibbs' - the crowded space where her own partners hinder her. Every time the madwoman paces past her another, different opportunity to kill presents itself and is gone.

She must lock herself in her place, let Gibbs handle the scene, let him control the talk.

'If we survive this,' she thinks, the words burning through her mind, 'I shall install automatic weapons under this desktop - and to the back of this chair. And I shall use them on Tony if he lets another unescorted, untagged woman step into the bullpen.'

x

Gibbs, at his desk, starts at the sharp sound of his cell phone but represses the move, not daring to answer the chiming device.

The woman whirls on him, detonator clutched so tightly her hand shakes. "WHO'S THAT?"

"I can find out," he answers as levelly as he can, forcing his heart back down. 'What I wouldn't do for some water.'

"Okay, but don't do anything smart."

He refrains from pointing out that for over two hours that's all he's tried to do. He takes the phone out, reads the name on the screen. "It's Palmer."

"ANSWER IT."

'No need to scream,' he thinks, wishing the woman would exercise a little self-control. Then again, she hasn't let go of that damned button. "Yeah, Gibbs."

The message is brief, he doesn't need much for the full import to make itself felt. "Got it, thanks." He closes the phone.

"Where is she?"

"Another hour."

"SHE'S TAKING TOO _LONG_."

"Can't be helped," he tells her with careful calm, thinking quickly, integrating this new information into the situation. Mary Whitney's motives for revenge, and McGee's part in that revenge, are now clear. But the main mission hasn't changed: staying alive beside a walking bomb with an erratic trigger.

To make progress, he has to know what Whitney knows. Correction: to know what she believes. "How did your ex-husband die?"

x

"What?" Caught off guard by the question, she can only ask "What do you mean?"

"Your ex-husband, Dennis Whitney. How did he die?" The details of that dramatic day have never been released. He doesn't break contact from Whitney's darting eyes, but through his peripheral vision he watches the effects of his revelation flash through his team.

"HE MURDERED HIM," she screams, thrusting the small detonator box toward McGee, who flinches back. They have good reason to flinch. All of them have varied disturbing memories of Dennis Whitney, Robert Kimmel, Steven Sullivan and their cell leader Anna Klein.

Gibbs knows McGee's memories are the most painful. Though all had suffered to varying degrees at the hands of those operatives, it was McGee who had been captured, tortured for two days and then spent weeks healing.

"McGee wasn't here."

"His FAULT!"

"How?"

"His face. They took my Dennis away, substituted someone I never knew," her shift from angry to forlorn is only momentary. "AND YOU BASTARDS _MURDERED _HIM."

Months ago the disguised Dennis Whitney had stridden into the bullpen, going straight to McGee's desk. It had been minutes after a conference between Gibbs and Shepherd in the latter's office, where she had revealed to Gibbs the stunning news that McGee had attempted to rape Chaplain O'Mallory.

Gibbs had charged down to the bullpen to get an explanation for this outrage but had found him missing. The man arrived moments later, seconds after Shepherd had caught up with the outraged Supervisor. They'd all believed McGee was suffering the after-effects of the recent 'Elf Lord' delusion. Gibbs only cared that his agent had - _allegedly _- just thrown his career away.

"_McGee_."

"Yes, boss?" the hurried agent had asked, barely paying attention to the irate summons, not deviating from his purpose as he sat down.

"Come over here."

Whitney glanced up, seeing Gibbs and Shepherd on either side of Gibbs' desk, neither looking happy. Was his cover blown? "Just a second."

He reached for the keyboard, ready to type as fast as he could. He and his comrades had finally broken the real McGee and had obtained the access code to the Delphi files. He had to access and flash-feed the information immediately.

x

Gibbs could hardly believe he'd been put off. He'd been ready to give the man a wake-up call that would knock him across the room, now he wasn't inclined to be as kind. "_NOW_, McGee."

Whitney hit the keys as quickly as he could, ready to access the Delphi files with the pass code they'd finally ripped from McGee and transmit the data to the warehouse. Once begun, the agents could never stop it in time.

'Priority code'. [Enter Priority Code] the computer directed. '75810980179' 'Enter'.

Every alarm bell, every siren, every klaxon in the room, in the building, in the entire Navy Yard screamed out at once.

x

Jennifer Shepherd, closest to the faux McGee, ran to him as the man leapt up, drew his gun and _shot _the computer.

Agents throughout the room dove for cover as the three shots blasted out. They'd reached for their own weapons and came up behind what cover they had.

But they'd been unable to believe, as they searched rapidly for a target in the earsplitting din, that one of their own had just shot his computer.

x

Jenny slammed to a halt so hard she'd continued forward for another half-step, off balance, unable to prevent Whitney from reaching out with his left hand to grab her blouse and yank her to him. He spun her about into a tight grip, his arm about her throat, his gun pressed to her right temple.

"Nobody move," he'd shouted over the blaring bells and horns and sirens. "Nobody _fuckin'_ move or I blow her _fuckin' brains_ _out_."

They knew this shocking threat was empty. If he killed her he'd die by the guns of two dozen agents, but no one was willing to take the chance.

And he was one of their own.

Gibbs, looking into the wild eyes of the man he still believed to be his teammate and friend, watched him hold a Sig pressed to Shepherd's head and felt the world tilt.

"Lower your weapons," Gibbs ordered in a carefully level voice, his words barely audible over the noise. Slowly, two dozen guns descended from the incredible tableau. "Talk to us, McGee."

Whitney didn't get a chance, for one gun remained trained upon him. Ziva, to his left, stood with her gun still, supported in steady, outstretched hands. "Tim..."

Her compelling word cut through the loud ringing and honking and whining and Whitney turned and saw the gun aimed at him. He brought his own gun out past Jennifer's head.

One loud shot blasted through the din. Whitney's head jerked back. Driven backward, his grip on Shepherd dragged her after him but she twisted out, barely stayed on her feet to wind up near Michelle's desk.

'McGee' slammed across the front of his own desk, dislodging the monitor and an avalanche of equipment, then crashed face up on the floor. The small hole in the middle of his forehead belied the large, gory hole in back. A spray of blood covered his desk and the rear partition.

There were no words anyone could say as the agents gathered about the still body of their friend and partner. He stared upward at nothing while the noise drove away all thought, all reason.

x

Shepherd's phone call quieted the Alert. In the dead silence Gibbs turned on Ziva. "_Why_?"

"I love Tim more than any man in this world," she'd said.

"You got a funny way of _showing _it, lady!" DiNozzo was no longer sure which of them had been crazy.

"That is not Tim. I know Tim and that was not him." She shook herself out of the horrifying place in which her mind had momentarily trapped her. "Aside from the way he spoke and acted, that man shot his _computer__._ And while restraining Director Shepherd with his left hand, he was holding his gun in his right."

x

Thinking back over the tense moments, the Agents realized they'd missed this vital point. McGee would no more use his right hand under duress than they would risk a shot with their left.

"That's loose logic for blowing his head apart." Tony's anger was high as he turned from the prone body.

"Is it, Tony? Then how about this? The GPS tag Abby gave to Tim a couple of weeks ago came in, but Michelle Lee's cell phone signal is nowhere in the bi-state area." She picked up the remote and turned on the plasma screen. "The telemetry readings are way off, I can't read them," she admitted, for the very first time actually wishing for Abby's presence. She could have interpreted the readings better. "But _that_ is Tim McGee."

One red dot flashed on the map, beside which was an eight digit code. "Zoom in on that," Gibbs commanded. Five successive enlargements focused on a single building. "Move out."


	6. Tumult

Chapter Six  
Tumult

In Abby's lab, six anxious men and women huddle about the plasma screen. Michelle and Jimmy have returned from Abby's office but the tension in the room, which had come from only the drama being played out on the screen, now has a second locus. Neither says a word, but shame and anger are high in the air.

"Abby," Shepherd presses, "don't you have anything - _some _drug that'll keep her finger on that button?"

"_Nothing_." She's answered that question already, twice. "You need something that works instantly. I haven't got anything that works instantly."

"We are fighting the clock," Ducky reminds them. "Within less than an hour Agent Palmer will theoretically arrive from the 'Bellerophon' and Jethro will need another plan."

Michelle steps forward. "Unless I do go–"

"NO." Jimmy's explosive cry makes everyone jump as it reverberates through the lab. They'd all been tense, but since he and Michelle came back from Abby's inner office he's been on a knife's edge. "You are _not _going up there."

Michelle's just admitted something he'd suspected for months, that there was more to the assault she'd suffered than she'd allowed anyone to know. She'd lied to them all but he doesn't care about that. He only cares about her being in danger _again_.

x

Ducky' surprised at his fire. "Mister Palmer–"

"_NO_!"

Michelle appeals up to him. "But I–"

"_**NO**_!"

"James," Siobhan says from behind the furious man, "I know how you feel. My fiancé is up–"

Jimmy whirls on the priest. "Your _future _husband. My _WIFE_."

Startled, she backs away. None of them have ever known Jimmy angry, let alone red-faced with fury.

Ducky's particularly appalled at this insensitive outburst, so unlike the young man. Whatever transpired in Abby's office must have been particularly distressing.

"That's _enough_," Shepherd's voice cracks through the astounding argument like a whip snap. "She is not going up there."

"Damned _right _she's no–"

/"Your ex-husband impersonated McGee./ Gibbs' voice from the screen yanks their attentions back to the Squad Room. /Do you know why?/

xx

He has to build carefully and again he wishes he and the fractured woman were alone. Last time he'd faced a belt of bombs he'd been alone - with a half-dozen hostages in a classroom - but his Team had been safe.

They had been safe.

He'd also been confident they were devising a solution. He can be confident others are now - but it's not quite the same. He has high faith in those outside this room, but utter faith in his team.

"Your people _told_ me why," Mary Whitney retorts, furious. "But they _lied_. Dennis isn't like that."

"He used to beat you regularly. That's why you divorced him." 'Maybe if I can't get through to her, I can focus her anger on me. Make me the bogey-man, maybe I can get her close. I'll tackle her, if my hand slips, maybe the others might survive. They're worth it. Always will be.'

"We were working it out. He – he needed help. I could've helped him. You took him away from me BEFORE I HAD THE CHANCE."

'She's too unstable', Gibbs thinks. 'This won't work. The wrong word can set her off.' He's not sure if he can get through to her safely, and wishes he had Ducky's insight and advice.

He hopes Shepherd does.

xx

"Mary Whitney is someone I would classify as a dependant victim," Ducky tells his colleagues in Abby's lab. "I analyzed her when the case was first presented, before she was determined not to have played a part in her ex-husband's activities. She credited a deep, abiding Roman Catholic faith in getting her through the stressful times of living with, escaping from and frequently returning to her abuser." He takes a step away, not to focus on them collectively, but to distance himself from the tension.

He turns back when he's sure he can. "Despite an ongoing series of verbal, physical and sexual abuses, she returned to him again and again. Even after she divorced him, she could not sever the emotional tie between them. She continually placed herself back under his control." He steps closer, wishing he could distance himself further.

"It is a pattern seen innumerable times in abusive relationships. She desired to repair and strengthen their relationship; he looked at his behavior as a way of keeping his property under control. His attitude toward women in general, and to his wife in particular, were misogynistic in the–"

"Ducky," Siobhan cuts in, "I think we need little reminder of his attitude toward women." That assault in the elevator, when she'd - when they'd all - believed Tim McGee had tried to rape her, haunts her dreams and still shatters her nights.

"Yes, well," Ducky continues in answer to the priest's point, focused as he is on the nightmare of the present and oblivious to the nightmare of the past, "Mary Whitney returned several times to her ex-husband's control. This is such a factor even following the break of divorce that I would classify her as a dependant personality."

"What can you tell us about _this _situation?" Shepherd stresses.

"Sadly, without access to records that will take more hours than we have remaining to obtain, I cannot offer a definitive assessment."

"Then what _can _you offer that'll help?"

Ducky hates to say it. "Nothing. We must depend upon Jethro's tact and diplomacy."


	7. Showdown

Chapter Seven  
Showdown

"Why was your ex-husband altered to look like McGee?" Gibbs asks the pacing woman, trying to draw out anything that might keep them alive. He knows very well why it had been done, but can't go on that truth. He must work with what Mary Whitney believes.

"I don't know. I don't CARE." She stabs the detonator toward him. "All I know is he's DEAD."

McGee, just at the edge of his vision, went white. 'Rule 14, McGee,' he would say if he could, a shorthand way of reminding the man 'Never admit you're scared.' Of course, he's already shattered that rule.

"Your husband was part of a plot to wipe us out," he tells Whitney instead, with the smallest possible break between threat and response. "He had to be stopped."

"You didn't have to _kill _him!"

"He gave us no choice."

"I DON'T CARE. I DON'T CARE. When that bitch Palmer gets here you're all going!"

"That's not gonna happen."

"WHAT?"

"She's not coming."

xx

"Sweet Jesus," Ducky mutters.

"We've got to get a negotiator up there," Jimmy declares.

"Gibbs is our negotiator," Shepherd reminds him sharply, appalled by this tactic.

"He just threw away his only chip."

"He was not going to have it for long," Ducky reminds his assistant.

xx

"WHADAYAMEAN NOT COMING?" the woman screams, her fury flaring.

Gibbs has decided he's run out of options; they're only minutes away from Palmer's theoretical return. Time to go to Plan B. "They're not going to let her up. Not to die."

"THEN I'LL TAKE YOU OUT."

"You won't get all five of us."

"I'LL TAKE WHAT I CAN GET."

"But you want all five. Four isn't enough. You can't have your revenge because Palmer will live."

"I'll HAVE my revenge," she cries, thrusting the detonator at him.

"It's not enough."

xx

"_NO_," Abby cries, startling the others clustered about her. "No No No NO NO _NO_!"

"What is it?" Shepherd demands, trying to swallow her heart. The bombs haven't gone off.

"_Look_." Abby stabs her finger near the bottom of the screen.

Reverend Siobhan O'Mallory had obviously gone up the emergency stairs. She steps into the rear of the bullpen and stops near Michelle's desk.

xx

Tim McGee feels his heart turn over as he sees his fiancé step into the bullpen. He'd always known his love was brave, but this goes beyond all reason and at the worst possible time.

He dares not make a sound. Whitley hasn't seen her. 'Shav - get _out _of here!' he screams silently, his heart wrenched. She _has _to back off _now_.

Of all things, this is the worst. _Yes_, he was going to die - maybe - but she was going to be safe. _Shav was going to live_.

Whitney, nearer Ziva's desk, perhaps alerted by someone's eyes, turns. "GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE."

"You don't have to do this," Siobhan tells her with astounding calm, her tone masking her terror.

Tim's on his feet and doesn't remember getting there. "Shav _get out of here_." His heart explodes with every thunderous boom.

"No, Timmy." Frightened beyond anything she'd ever known, Siobhan focuses on duty, on love. She can't let anyone die, but though she'd tell herself she's expressing God's love for this misguided daughter, striving to save her life and her soul, it's Timmy's love that moves her. She keeps her eyes locked on the distraught woman's, tries not to see her despairing beloved. "I can help you."

She needs Whitney to believe this, to believe she can get out of this alive. Siobhan tries to keep secret, to keep out of her eyes 'I want to help Timmy.'

x

Gibbs has always believed NCIS was no place for a woman priest. Now he wants to pick her up and throw her bodily from the room. He'd had things under control, was working into a new plan, setting the groundwork for keeping his team - his friends - alive. "O'Mallory, turn around and walk away," he commands, fighting the urge to get up and throw her away.

"GET THE FUCK AWAY." Whitney cries as Siobhan steps closer.

"O'Mallory, I said _turn around and walk away_."

Siobhan wants to run - away, to Timmy at her right, anywhere. She hasn't stopped praying, won't stop praying, her mouth sandy. She has her Christian duty, but she's not sure anymore if she came to do her duty, to save Timmy - and the others - or because life without Timmy will be Hell on Earth. "Michelle's safe, you can't have her. Come with me."

"No. NO. This ends here. YOU BRING HER HERE. YOU FUCKING BRING HER!"

"I can't." She won't wish she could, not even to save them, of that she's sure. But what if she could? Could she talk Whitney down then?

x

Whitney looks from the priest to her victims – four-fifths of her victims.

"Reverend," Ziva says tightly, unable to believe this has gone so wrong, "back away now."

"You can still live," Siobhan insists, focused on Mary Whitney - and on Timmy. She tries to keep her voice soft and steady but her racing heart is pounding for escape. "We can all walk out of here. I promise you'll be safe. I'll help you. I promise."

She sees the welter of emotions flare through the faces of Timmy's friends. She tries to ignore them. She tries to tell herself Gibbs had his chance, that now it's God's turn - but in her terror she's not sure what He's saying. "We can all live," she insists. "Whatever you're feeling, whatever hardships you bear, we can help. _I _can help."

"You don't wanna help. You don't want your husband to die. _Mine's dead_."

"Shav, _please_," Tim begs, trapped standing between the desks, needing to move, unable to move. If he distracts Whitney she may set off the bombs. "Please, Shav, go _away_."

"I can help," Siobhan insists, speaking softly, consolingly, to Whitney. Cold fills her. She's going to die if Timmy dies. She doesn't want to die - but if Timmy– "I can take you out of here safely. I promise you won't be hurt."

"I'll still have my revenge. I'll destroy _you_!"

"You don't have to–"

Whitney raises the detonator. "You wanna marry him? GO TO HELL WITH HIM!"

"_NOOOOO_!" Tim's scream drowns out Whitney's as he leaps for Siobhan – too late.

The blast roars through Operations, catches Tim while he's still in mid-air––


	8. Tearing and Tears

Chapter Eight  
Tearing and Tears

Death fills Tim McGee's ears, his eyes are clenched in anticipation of fiery agony but all he feels is a body pressed to the front of his. He forces his eyes open, sees the face of his beloved inches from his own. She's looking up at him from the floor, her red hair a halo about her head, but: "Are we dead?"

Tony DiNozzo, standing above them, suspects that their position may well be the Probie's idea of Heaven but "No, _we're _not dead."

McGee looks back and up at him. Tony is spattered with blood from head to foot, though his face is smeared with red. He'd tried to wipe off the gore.

He looks further about. Ziva is spattered to her waist. Gibbs, behind his desk as she had been, is equally marked. He'd tried to wipe away the blood, but it covers him in a sickening wash. Tim remembers feeling himself hit from behind - he doesn't want to see it.

He turns over, rolls off Siobhan and she sits up, her legs still pinned under his and they stare at where Mary Whitney had stood. Gibbs and David examine what's left of both halves of the woman's body. It's almost severed within the restraining steel that had been clamped about her body, and the odor of death and worse is thick in the air.

Blood drenches the bullpen, covers the four agents. Only Siobhan, shielded by Tim's body, had been moderately protected, the blood on her spotty.

McGee barely has time to take in the scene, to comprehend what's happened. Whitney lies where she'd stood, her midsection blasted, what's left is soaked in blood and worse and he doesn't look long. The glimpse of what's left, above and below her waist, is sickening enough.

Amazingly, the metal brace clamped about her body is intact. It contained the explosion of the twenty-five bombs, obviously less powerful than they'd seemed, directing the force inward to Whitney's midsection and upward and downward through her body, blowing out most of it. What's left of her body isn't severed, the spine remains somewhat intact, but the gory devastation is horrific enough.

Siobhan, still partially under him, shoves him, shoves again. She gets him off her legs and leaps to her feet, hand clamped over her mouth as she dashes out of the rear of the bullpen, cuts around through the adjacent bullpen and sprints for the ladies room.

xx

In less than a minute agents who'd stayed near the entrances crowd Operations. These, however, are experienced Crime Scene Investigators so Gibbs' bullpen is kept vacant except for SSA Kevin Lamb and his teammates Lisa DuBois and Janet Levy, assigned to process the grizzly scene.

For the next half-hour Melanie Kelman, Patrick Larsen and Kenneth Templeton take statements from the shaken agents in the adjacent bullpen. Every moment had been recorded, but debriefings are essential. There are so many questions to be answered but some, they know, may never be.

Gibbs' team's bullpen is uninhabitable, covered with human detritus. The ventilators, revved up to full power, are inadequate to the job of clearing the air of the stench. No one leaves, however. Each Investigator knows that the only way not to smell the vile remains is to stay at their jobs; after a few minutes the sense of smell is simply overwhelmed and shuts down, the brain just stops receiving the impressions. They anxiously await that moment.

While furniture can be cleaned, virtually all paper, books, photos and other porous surfaces are heavily spattered with blood and various bodily fluids. Some things can be copied or replaced, but the majority must be trashed.

x

Tony had left the scene almost as soon as the other teams had arrived, but he'd changed clothes elsewhere rather than heading for the restroom, which had been his oft-stated destination during the standoff. Now, blood washed off and wearing blue coveralls, he sees Melanie Kelman has finished speaking to Ziva and approaches him to take his statement but he holds his hand up to halt her. He's seen the haunted look in McGee's eyes as Patrick Larsen finishes their debriefing and drifts close enough to him to speak privately. Kelman waits, allows the men the moment. "Hey."

"Hey." McGee's still a little shell-shocked, he's spattered in blood and worse from behind, and neither is going to be so mindless as to ask if the other is okay. Avoiding that does limit, however, the things one can say.

"They done taking samples?" Tony glances pointedly over Tim's shoulder, referring to the Probie's bloodstained back. Of all of them only O'Mallory, shielded by and under Tim, had been spared being drenched.

"You?" McGee asks, his tone haunted, not even realizing the reply has nothing to do with the question.

"Yeah."

"Dry cleaning's gonna be a bitch."

Tony won't consider dry cleaning. He'd gotten out of his clothes and into the shower at the first possible moment after he escaped the room. "I'm gonna burn them."

Though Tim's grateful for a moment to talk, to try to get his head back together, the thought of 'head' makes him think of Tony's earlier needs. He'll think of anything rather than the blasted, nearly severed body under the red-splotched sheet in the bullpen behind him. "I thought you wanted to hit the Head."

Though he'd showered, Tony still feels unclean, and the overwhelming odor of exploded human body pervading the bullpen beside them won't let him forget the stench he'd had follow him downstairs. "Well, Probie, when those bombs went off, that wasn't exactly a problem anymore."

x

Abby and Ducky, their respective initial evaluations of the scene complete, join their colleagues in the adjacent bullpen.

Except for Tony, who'd acted before anyone among the equally ranked agents could assume control of the scene, they'd only been allowed to wash hands and faces. After photos have been taken, the clothes will be collected. No one is expected to want them back.

"What happened?" Jennifer Shepherd's demand to Abby is half a word faster than Gibbs'.

"I'll have to give you the details later," Abby says, "but those explosives were nowhere near as powerful as we'd been afraid of. They weren't even as strong as M-80's – not that they needed to be more, pressed up against her body like that. The twenty-five cylinders were open on the body side. The steel clamp that I _thought _was to prevent someone from shooting the cylinders contained the explosions. They directed all the force inward, upward and downward. Her shattered spine is all that's holding her together. Kind of."

"She wanted to rejoin her husband," Ducky observes, "and make sure you five lived with the guilt."

"I really thought she wanted us dead," Ziva says, holding her mask as firmly as she can.

"It turns out not. She wanted you alive - to suffer."

"Her version of revenge," Gibbs concludes, his voice tight when he wants to shout. There's no one to vent at. "Survivor's guilt and suicide-by-cop."

"I'd noted earlier she considered herself a devout Roman Catholic," Ducky continues, as though normal conversation could drive the horror back. "It is odd, considering her actions; however, I believe that while she was willing to commit suicide she did not want to face the consequences in the Afterlife for five murders. She preferred for you, rather than herself, to have eternal suffering."

x

Abby returns to Gibbs' bullpen to supervise the collection of evidence. It's unnecessary, the Forensics Team is quite capable and her place now is in her lab, but she pulls rank to stay close to her friends.

Shepherd turns to Gibbs, puts herself directly before him, her tone hard as iron. "You and your team report to the Staff Psychiatrist, then set up a schedule of therapy and go home. Take the rest of the week off, effective immediately."

Gibbs is as unwilling as she'd expected when she'd decided to make it an order. "We've been through wor–"

"Your team was held as hostages for nearly three hours, almost died–"

"I'd have handled it if O'Mallory hadn't interfered." She'd run away fast enough when she'd seen what was left of the body, which contents him. He'd thought she never should have been appointed and will be happy not to see her again - in spite of any potential connection to one of his team.

"I'll handle that." Shepherd knows the priest had followed her conscience and training and intends to 'handle' this complaint by depositing it in the circular file. There are more important things to consider now. "Your people have had their sanctuary invaded - and pretty much destroyed. Most of it must be scrapped – we'll try to preserve some personal stuff if we can. Now you know the Regs as well as I do so spare us both the quoting. Take the help in good grace and then go on vacation." He tries to cut in, she won't hear it. "A few days vacation will look better than Medical Rest Leave. Hit the showers and go home."

Gibbs wants off this subject and turns instead to Ducky. "You took your time getting here."

"Yes," Ducky grants, feeling caught between them. "When the explosives detonated the others rushed off immediately, but I was delayed dealing with a minor fainting spell."

Gibbs looks to where Kenneth Templeton is debriefing Michelle. She and Ducky had arrived together. "She seems okay."

"Actually," Ducky pitches his voice lower, "I would be grateful if you would exercise some discretion on that subject. I fear that if Anthony finds out, Mr. Palmer will have quite some time living it down."

xxx

A half hour later Ziva slams the full box of ammunition onto the ledge before her and adjusts the fit of the large ear-covers that will shut out the devastating noise about to fill the basement firing range. She knows she cannot shut out anger the way she can shut out sound; she had failed to protect her partners and, except for a perverse twist of the mad women's mind, she and her part– her _friends_, would be dead.

She has already set the target sixty feet down the middle of three fields.

She draws her Sig, sights upon the target and does not try to repress the anger. She cannot.

She had never before been impressed with the American government's sense of Political Correctness until today. She puts a bullet through the female perp's forehead.

Two more hole the eyes and the rest of the bullets slit the target's throat.

She ejects the magazine, reloads and proceeds to dismember the image at every joint.

There's a stack of targets under the ammo box.

xx

Michelle Palmer opens her apartment door, turns left and cuts through the living room to the hall toward the bedroom but: "'Chelle."

She halts as Jimmy closes the door. She doesn't turn, doesn't say anything. All the way home she hadn't said anything.

"What can I do?" he asks from behind her. He'd always suspected, despite her denials, that there was more to what had happened to her on that dreadful day, but she would never let him in.

"Oh, Jimmy."

"I'm sorry."

This does make her turn quickly. "No, _you_ have nothing to apologize for. _I'm_ sorry. I'm sorry I – was..."

"'Chelle, why couldn't you tell me?" She bites her lip. Is it to keep from speaking, or from crying? She's not sure. He's not sure.

"I couldn't." The assault, the capture, the _rapes_ had come just as he'd been recovering from shooting George Franklin. "You – were suffering so. I couldn't add to it."

"You were hurt. I'd've helped you."

She blushes, can't meet his eyes, finds a pull on the carpet. "You couldn't."

"I'd've tried."

"I needed you to," she admits, ashamed. She still can't look at him. "I told everyone nothing happened. I needed to talk. I couldn't find anyone left."

He steps up to her. "I'm here. I've always been here."

She looks up, reaches up, runs her hands over his chest. She forces a smile that she tries to make erotic. "I know how you can help me feel better."

He knows too, and he knows why she wants it. He stops her hands with his. "We will. Later."

Surprise makes her meet his eyes. He's never turned it down or even hesitated. Did he know she was doing it to–?

"Talk to me."

She can't.

"Talk to me."

"They–" The first word brings such pain, such a flare of misery that she has to fight. She tries again, wants to say it, to express herself in words - calmly - and tries again. Pain and misery slam her to silence.

A battering ram of grief and pain smashes through her and she can only fling her arms about him, bury her face into his chest.

He holds her gently as the torrent overwhelms her.

xxx

Tony knocks on the door, knocks again, and his heart eases as he hears the locks on the other side click off. When the barrier opens he feels his heart open. He and Jeanne have been through so much, not the least of which had been revelations about her father and their brief separation until heart and soul brought them back together again so many months ago.

Now heart and soul are in equal pain, and she doesn't have to ask any questions. He supposes his eyes say everything, for she just opens her arms and takes him in.

He needs the pain to ease ... but there's just so much of it.

xxx

Gibbs stops on the basement stairs and looks down at the half-finished boat. Building it is therapy for him but there are some things a boat simply will not handle.

He finds he won't be working on the boat when Jennifer Shepherd steps around from the opposite side to stand in front of it.

"Waiting long?" He doesn't care if he gets an answer.

"Surprised I beat you, actually. You were the only one to leave without scheduling an appointment with Doctor Gyves."

"Got nothing to say to him," he tells her, descending the stairs. He knows the conversation isn't over so, reaching the bottom, he says what's been on his mind during the long drive circling the city twice. "She doesn't belong in NCIS."

Jennifer knew this old subject would weigh on him more than a disturbed woman making it all the way into Operations and trying to kill him and his team. That was an overt threat that a man of action and direction has an easier time dealing with. He's expressed this other point three times already in the past few months, and she decides it's time for a reasoned answer.

"NCIS is a strange puppy, Jethro. Always has been. Civilians investigating the Armed Forces, we take from the most eclectic walks of life and she's more civilian than the civilians. She's not even NCIS in the strictest sense. She carries a badge but she was recruited, not as an Investigator, but as a Consultant, or perhaps Independent Contractor."

"Damned too independent."

"If you mean she didn't follow your orders, you're right and in time I'm going to go into that. But I'm not letting her go, our people need her both in the religious sense and as an outsider who doesn't keep the records Gyves must."

He doesn't answer. Few could fill the many roles the priest does, and the service she provides is helpful on too many levels.

And then there's McGee. He can't very well distance himself from her when, in a week, there'll be two McGees for him to contend with.

"You don't like her, do you?"

Her words break into his thoughts and he can't answer this either. He'd first met her when she was a witness in a murder case and they'd butted heads harder than he had with any other witness in years. He hadn't liked how any of that case had turned out, and her personal involvement with a member of his team hadn't helped.

What if there hadn't been that involvement? Well, in truth she's a very attractive redhead and he's seen a lot of very appealing–

But she's associated with a member of his team and in a few days is going to be vastly more associated.

"Do you trust her?" Shepherd asks, contented with not receiving an answer to her previous question. She hadn't really wanted one for herself.

He'd never known, even when they were 'butting heads', of any reason not to trust her. In fact, her vocation and his knowing her distinct idiosyncrasy – that she can't look at someone and tell even a 'white lie' – makes it easier to trust her than anyone else he knows. If she just keeps her glasses on, he doesn't even have to try.

"Would you fire her?"

Beyond her association with McGee, her service is too useful to too many agents. No, he wouldn't fire her. Yes, he's attracted to her and he's more comfortable with her at a distance for that very reason. Yes, he's mad that she followed her conscience and disobeyed his orders but she's in a position of not _having _to obey him – because she obeys someone else.

A strange puppy indeed.

"Now, Jethro," Jennifer says, satisfied with what she'd read on his inexpressive face, "let's discuss what you really need to talk about."


	9. I'll Never Leave You

Chapter Nine  
I'll Never Leave You

Tim McGee has showered and changed into spare clothes from his locker, and followed his director's orders to see Dr. Gyves. After an initial conversation, he's set up an appointment for tomorrow. But then, instead of following orders to go home, there's only one thing he wants to do.

He climbs the stairs to the fourth floor, walks down the long corridor and knocks on a door marked with a discreet plate, white upon brown: 'Chaplain'.

No answer. He knocks again, then more firmly. "Shav, it's me."

Silence.

"Shav, I know you're in there. You didn't leave the Yard. Your phone is in there; I tracked your GPS."

Still nothing. With a sigh, he pulls out his own phone, but before he can open it:

"Timmy," her misery-laden voice filters through the door. "Please. Leave me alone."

She hadn't returned to Operations, where she technically should have exercised her duties. This, coupled with her fragile tone, tells him all he'd needed to know.

"No."

"Timmy, please ... go away."

x

Months ago she'd given him a duplicate key and for the first time he uses it, closes the door behind his back.

She looks back over her shoulder from where she kneels before her desk across the room. Attached to the wall above the desk is a crucifix.

She's changed her clothes, though she'd been somewhat protected from the spatter. She's wearing a blue dress now, no longer 'the Chaplain'.

"I'll _never _leave you."

He'd sworn this to her before, now his tone carries far more. She pushes herself up, turns to him and he sees the ravages of tears in her now-dry eyes.

"Is this our future?" she asks.

x

She'd asked him that same question once before, then with shattered heart, before his near-suicide mission aboard the USS Millennium. Now the question is laden with added pain.

"My ignoring you when you don't want my help? Yep."

"That's not it and you know it."

"That's my answer."

She doesn't want to fight. They don't fight and she'll be damned if this nightmare will spark their first one. She needs him, and he probably needs her just as much.

She crosses to the couch and sits down, but she's unable to look at him. "I've ... spent a half hour puking up my guts, then came up here and cried myself dry."

He sits down beside her, puts his arm about her. It's several moments before he can get her to lean closer.

"I'm sorry, a ghra," she says sadly, her head down, her profile curtained by red hair. She'd called him 'my love', but it doesn't disguise her pain. "I know I should've gone down to help. I tried. I _swear _I tried. I couldn't."

Her brogue is sharp, heavy in his ears with repressed emotion. "No one expected you to."

She looks up at him, brushing her hair behind her ear, hooking it behind the earpiece of her gold glasses, her half-useless glasses. She won't hide, not from him, not even though she can't any longer. "Liar. I'm the Chaplain. I went up when I wasn't supposed to, couldn't go down when I was."

"Why did you?"

x

The question hangs in the air between them. She can't keep his eyes, looks away to the far wall, the desk, the crucifix, anywhere but his eyes.

"I ... guess Agent Gibbs is pretty mad at me for interfering."

Tim would say it'd be a good idea to stay away until her next duty shift next Tuesday, but by then she'll be on Wedding Leave and it has nothing to do with the question.

x

She looks up to him, can see in his eyes that he knows her breaking in on the drama had little to do with the reasons she given everyone else in those tense moments. She'd offered Whitney her aid, her protection, the sanctuary of the Church.

She knows he'd seen through that.

But she can't hold his eyes, hangs her head, her red hair curtaining them, again blocking his view. It's a long moment before she can say it.

"I was willing to die," she finally admits to the floor.

He can't see her face, he doesn't have to. "I know."

"I went down … up …." She forces the words, hard though they are, past incipient tears. "I told her the truth. But I also went ... because I couldn't bear ..."

"Couldn't bear what?" He thinks he knows, has to hear it.

"If you died ..." her voice catches. She takes a deep breath, forces the words through. "I didn't want to live."

What can he say? 'Live?' 'I don't want you to die?' What can he possibly say?

x

"I've never seen ..."

Some horrors just can't be expressed.

He wishes he could say that nothing this bad will ever happen again. It could happen tomorrow. Or tonight.

When she'd accepted the job as Chaplain, he'd anticipated that she'd have a sane career. It was an extra duty in addition to her duties at Saint Mary's, a part-time service, once a week, Tuesdays 0800 - 1600. She'd do counseling with agents who need someone to reach out to without the official records that staff Therapists must maintain. She would be an intermediary voice. She'd perform the occasional Liturgical duties...

The reality became nothing like the plan. The first 'occasional Liturgical duty' was to officiate at the Memorial for nearly a dozen murdered agents. She'd been turned into an unwilling instrument of murder. She'd been assaulted, nearly raped, in an elevator. She'd been kidnapped, beaten half to death, raped, sodomized and crucified. Now she'd nearly lost her fiancé and she'd seen someone blown up.

Guilt stabs at Tim. He may not have forced her into this life, but he did maneuver her into it. If he could've foreseen, if he could've known that by asking her to accept this job he would subject her to these horrors, especially this last...

"I'm sorry."

x

She shifts away so she can face him directly. "No, Timmy, I'm sorry. I should never have interfered. Agent Gibbs might have solved it but I–"

"He couldn't have 'solved it'. There was no solution but her death."

This stops her. She'd clung to hope but there never was any. "I know," she finally admits, as much to herself. "But I'm still sorry." She sighs deeply, all the strength going out of her. "Hell of a life we live here."

He could free her from it. Perhaps he should. But there is really only one way to do that, if all that's happened has finally driven her away from their life together. Apprehension clutching his heart, he forces himself to ask the question.

"Do you still want to get–?"

x

Her turn as she looks up, astonished he could even think it, cuts him off. "_Yes_!" She grasps his hand tightly, never wants to let go. "This doesn't change that or how I feel. I _know _this life is hard, going to get harder but I'm not changing _that_! I'm never changing that. Yes, we're going to stay together despite all the legions of hell!"

He hugs her, just holds her. She puts her arms around him, holds on, doesn't want to think, to speak. She holds him tightly, eyes closed, clings to the future, to love and happiness she prays for with all her soul and tries to blank out the nightmare.

Epilogue

Five days have passed, days when all involved in atrocious horror have worked hard to find balance. They'd taken their enforced vacations with varying degrees of gratitude or frustration, dealt with Crisis Intervention specialists and spent time together, alternately talking about and pushing away the nightmare. There was no coordinated gathering, but by tacit agreement each was open to the other as the call arose.

Leroy Jethro Gibbs made extraordinary progress on constructing his boat. Tony DiNozzo spent every available moment that he wasn't with his partners with Jeanne. Ziva David worked out until her overtaxed muscles screamed their protests and various pieces of gym equipment came in need of repair.

Jimmy and Michelle Palmer sequestered themselves in their apartment, the phone disconnected except for 'take-out' orders. They never spoke to others of what transpired during those days, except vague admissions that it was very therapeutic. Timothy McGee wrote eleven chapters of his fourth novel, leaving his apartment only in the company of one other person when she could draw him out, which she did when he resisted keeping his therapist appointments, and sleeping only when his crusted eyes refused to focus.

Tomorrow they return to work. Not all of them are anxious to get there.

Now, Sunday morning, Tim leaves his apartment for the first time of his own will and goes to seek solace - and more - on New York Avenue. Here he can be, if not anonymous, at least somewhat at peace. This place, for all its still fairly new significance in his life, is not NCIS.

So much has happened this week. It'd started with minor, then major chaos, then almost a week of trying to escape the madness. Now he needs more than healing.

x

Father George Donaldson knows much of what's happened, knows how the story he's heard a dozen times has affected his friend and partner. He'd worked hard to help her find balance and hope. He's not sure how well - if at all - he's succeeded. In the end, all is prayer, and faith, and hope.

He's devoted a Mass to a very disturbed woman, in hopes that she has found in death the peace that had eluded her in life.

His partner had been powerless to help her, yet at this particular moment there is an aspect hope for a better future that _he_ canprovide to his shaken partner.

x

He stands this morning before the Altar of St. Mary the Virgin Church following the exchange of Peace; this moment marks the formal transition from the Liturgy of the Word to the Liturgy of the Sacrament. Here it's traditionally a moment given over to announcements.

In the past two Sundays, in accord with Church rubrics, he has made this announcement. There have, fortunately and happily, been no replies to the previous ones. _This _is the one, however, that he's looked forward to making, the final one. This is the one he will _enjoy_.

In the first row on the church's right, or Epistle, side; as close as he can get without being _in _the Sanctuary, Tim McGee never takes his eyes from Siobhan who's seated in the sedilia, the triple seat backed by the right wall. She, quite properly, faces directly forward, her attention focused on the Altar, but Donaldson has seen her attention, her focus, is sometimes a hard thing to keep, and he's seen her eyes flicker to her beau when she thought no one would notice.

x

Donaldson turns left, looks back for a moment and favors her with a wink. This is support that he _can _give, a moment to wash out some of the nightmare of the past week. He knows it can't be as much as she needs, but it's something special nonetheless and cannot be diminished.

It's time, and he flatters himself that no one noticed a pause. The rubrics require this Notice be given thrice in three successive weeks. This is the final formal announcement, and his amplified voice fills the nave from sanctuary to narthex.

"I publish the Banns of Marriage between Mr. Timothy McGee and the Reverend Siobhan Marie O'Mallory. If there is anyone who can show just cause why they may not legally be married in accordance with God's law, you are bidden to declare it. _This is the Third Time of Asking_."

x

Blessed, satisfying silence.

He glances back at the white-albed woman, imagining that the floor length garment hides a fine tremble. He knows that for the third time - unreasonably though it is - she'd held her breath. He exchanges a quick smile with her and turns back to the congregation.

"You are all cordially invited to participate in the happy event, which will take place on the 17th at three o'clock." He shifts his voice into a passable echo of the woman's brogue, or a not-so-passable Barry Fitzgerald impression. "The church will be decorated in shamrocks and gold, so after you're finished watching the parade on television, join us for the _real _celebration."

Next Episode: Zabeth.  
Gibbs and his team must stop an Assassin and prepare for a wedding. Can they do either?


End file.
